ENMU puts 2018 in rear view

PORTALES — Every football team wants its last game of the season to be a win. But they’d prefer it were in a championship game, not the regular season.

Eastern New Mexico wrapped for the 2018 season on Saturday afternoon, beating Western Oregon 19-14 at Greyhound Stadium. There will be no playoffs for ENMU, just plenty of optimism for 2019.

A big part of the reason Eastern is already looking ahead to next year is that this year began with a parade of nationally-ranked team after nationally-ranked team, powerhouse after powerhouse. The result was starts of 0-3 and 1-5.

The Greyhounds tidied it up nicely for a respectable 5-6 finish, and with a relatively-low graduation of 11 seniors, the Hounds are thinking next year could go a bit better than this one.

Among the returnees is junior redshirt quarterback Wyatt Strand, who will carry a 32-game start streak into 2019. He’s already raring to go.

“I’m pretty sure this next week we’ll start lifting,” Strand said after Saturday’s season finale. “In the spring, (practice) will start in the first week. I’m looking forward to that. Offseason’s always fun, seeing who likes to work hard.”

This season began with a 31-14 road loss against Missouri S&T. Next came Eastern’s home opener against Colorado Mesa — then ranked 25th in the nation — which resulted in a 31-0 deficit that ended in a 34-21 loss.

Next up was top-ranked Texas A&M-Commerce at home, ending in a 21-11 defeat. The Hounds did beat Koy Detmer Jr. and Texas A&M-Kingsville 31-14 on the road to bag their first win of the season, but turned around the next weekend to host defending Lone Star Conference champion Midwestern State — then ranked fifth in the country — and fell just short, 31-23.

The cavalcade of tough opponents rolled on the following weekend, when the Hounds visited No. 21 Tarleton State and lost 48-28. And just like that, they were 1-5.

“It’s been kind of a rough year,” Strand acknowledged. “We’re definitely looking forward to next year, I’m definitely looking forward to next year. We’re going to have the same schedule, so we’ll be familiar with it.”

“It was brutal,” fifth-year linebacker Brad Hardin said after concluding his college playing career. “Those teams that we played are tough teams. I think those first four that we lost to are going to be in the playoffs.”

Finally done with that early stretch, Eastern came home to lambaste Western New Mexico 55-9 on Oct. 13. The Greyhounds blanked West Texas A&M 28-0 in Canyon, Texas the following week, earning the right to keep the Wagon Wheel in Portales.

And when they took care of UT Permian Basin 24-7 on Oct. 27, the once-struggling Hounds were on a three-game winning streak.

A 34-17 loss to Angelo State in their road finale doomed the Greyhounds’ chances of a winning record, but they finished up strong with last Saturday’s five-point victory.

5-6 wasn’t the 8-2 of 2017, but it wasn’t bad.

“It was definitely different,” Hardin said. “We lost a lot of seniors from last year. We had a lot of JUCO kids come in and step up. It just took us a while to get rolling, for us to start clicking together.”

Kelley Lee was the Greyhounds’ head coach for both of the above seasons after serving the previous five as Eastern’s offensive coordinator. He saw some positives in this up-and-down year.

“We won the ones we were supposed to,” he said, “and we lost six games to great teams. We were right there in the middle — we’re better than the bad teams but not good enough for the good teams. We’ve got to get better, but playing good competition, now we know where we’re at.”

Hardin, though he’s moving on, thinks where Eastern’s at is a pretty good place.

“I think they’re going to have 30 seniors coming back,” Hardin said. “I think they’re definitely going to be solid.”