Greyhounds hope to finish strong

PORTALES — Call it one for the road.

It is, after all, the last one this year for Eastern New Mexico’s football team. And it is on the road — way out on it.

ENMU (6-4) will conclude its 2019 slate on Saturday afternoon (1 p.m. Pacific Standard Time) in Monmouth, Oregon against Western Oregon University (7-3). The Greyhounds already secured a winning season by edging Angelo State 20-17 in overtime last weekend at Greyhound Stadium, but would of course like to depart the Beaver State this Saturday with another victory.

7-4 is better than 6-5.

The Hounds will vie for that seventh win on their longest road trip of the season, one which will have to involve a plane flight. They’re ready for it, though. In fact, they’re more than ready, they’re eager to hit the left coast.

“We’re excited,” Greyhounds redshirt senior defensive back Charles Countee said. “It’s always a fun trip to fly and play a team out of conference. It’s going to be a long trip, but we’re excited as seniors to get one more game.”

“I think it’s going to be cool,” Eastern senior kicker/punter Tyler Vargas said. “We get to fly; we get rid of the bus ride, so that’s going to be fun for us.”

ENMU’s redshirt senior quarterback Wyatt Strand says this will be his first time in Oregon. He’s looking forward to that, and thinks he will have fun playing on Western Oregon’s McArthur Field. Though he helped open Greyhound Stadium in 2016 and loved playing on its shiny new artificial turf, it was a different surface than he was used to playing on during his Logan High days. This Saturday’s game will be reminiscient of those bygone seasons.

“It’s pretty cool to play on a grass field,” Strand said, “because I had never played on a turf field before I got here.”

So, road trip, playing surface, season finale, translates to fun, fun, fun for the Greyhounds. But they will also be business-like at the same time. They are playing a regular-season game. This does count.

“It’s not my first time being in Oregon,” Eastern junior running back Justin Manyweather said, “so I’m going to take this road trip seriously, playing to come out with a victory.”

And that won’t be easy against a Western Oregon team that has won seven out of its last eight after an 0-2 start, a team whose only defeat in that eight-game stretch was a 42-41 overtime loss at home against Central Washington on Oct. 19. Since then the Wolves have won three straight — 37-22 over Eastern’s Lone Star Conference foe Midwestern State on Oct. 26, 45-14 over Simon Fraser in Burnaby, British Columbia on Nov. 2, and a 23-21 squeaker over Azusa Pacific last Saturday.

ENMU will be Western Oregon’s fifth LSC opponent this season; aside from Midwestern, the Wolves have also played Angelo State, Texas A&M-Commerce and Texas A&M-Kingsville. In fact, Angelo State and Texas A&M-Commerce were responsible for Western Oregon’s 0-2 start, which may bode well for the Greyhounds, considering they just beat Angelo last Saturday.

It also may bode well that Eastern was 3-1 against those opponents. Western Oregon was 2-2.

Still, the Wolves will be tough.

“Yeah, they’re a good football team,” Eastern’s third-year head coach Kelley Lee said. “It’ll be a heck of a challenge. ... There could be some bowl implications.”

The teams met in last year’s season finale at Greyhound Stadium, with Eastern holding on for a 19-14 victory thanks to a huge tackle by fifth-year senior linebacker Brad Hardin after the Wolves had reached the Greyhounds’ 7-yard line with under two minutes to go in the fourth quarter.

Strand remembers the game well. He also has a good recollection of the defense Western Oregon sent after him. “They show a lot of different fronts,” he said.

Offensively, Western Oregon still has quarterback Ty Currie, the player Hardin tackled to preserve last year’s season-ending victory for the Hounds. Currie, of Yreka, California, is now a 6’2” 205-pound senior who has played in all 10 of the Wolves’ games this season, completing 127-of-230 passes (55 percent) for 2,140 yards and 19 touchdowns, with eight interceptions and a 153.68 QB rating.

Curry is also the Wolves’ second-leading rusher with 769 yards, and leads them with 10 touchdown runs.

Omari Land is Western Oregon’s top rusher with 951 yards, and he’s second on the team with eight touchdown runs. Third for the Wolves in both categories is Nico Jackson with 706 yards and six touchdowns.

Thomas Wright leads Western Oregon in receptions (23) and receiving yards (475), and he’s tied with Marquis Sampson for the team lead in touchdown catches (4).

Eastern’s defense should be ready for all of the above, though, after holding then-21st-ranked Angelo State to 265 total yards and just 57 rushing.

The Greyhounds’ offense is led by senior running back Paul Terry, who came into last Saturday’s game with 1,448 rushing yards and tacked on a season-high 233 for a 10-game total of 1,681.

It should be an interesting matchup, one the Hounds seem capable of winning.

“We’re going to have to play a really sound game,” Lee said, “limit penalties and not have any turnovers.”

If the Greyhounds can manage that, then a 7-4 record and plus-.600 winning percentage could be theirs. They’d like to carry their momentum from the Angelo State upset through to season’s end.

“It’ll be fun after this win,” Lee said, “to go there and see if we can build off it.”