Last year, Georgia State was on a hot streak when they took on the Old Dominion Monarchs, winning its first four games of the inaugural season. The Monarchs were able to down the Panthers 34-20 and when the two teams faced each other again on Saturday, it was history repeating itself as the Monarchs defated the Panthers 40-17.
The game was littered with mistakes by both teams. The Panthers had two punts blocked and a total of three interceptions were thrown by quarterbacks Bo Schlechter and Drew Little. Panthers head coach Bill Curry was quick to point out the reason they suffered the loss.
“What happened today was a failure of leadership by all of us,” Curry said. “I have seldom felt better about preparation, and I’ve seldom been more disappointed with the result.
The Panthers kept the game close in the first quarter. After the Monarchs taking a 6-0 lead, the Panthers answered with a 26-yard field goal by Christian Benvenuto which was possible due to a muffed punt return by the Monarchs which was recovered by Nate Anthony and returned to the Old Dominion 14-yard line.
The Monarchs answered with a Colby Goodwyn 4-yard touchdown run to put them up by 10. Goodwyn ended the day with 190 yards on 26 carries while Angus Harper added 61 yards on 14 carries.
“We didn’t wear down in the first quarter and they ran the ball well,” Curry said talking about his defense wearing down due to Old Dominion rushing for 277 yards. We’ve been practicing at this pace since last March. This is not new to us.”
The Panthers cut the lead to three late in the first quarter when Donald Russell rushed from two yards out. He ended the day with 20 yards on five carries.
Old Dominion was able to increase its lead to 10 when Alex Arian blocks Matt Hubbard’s punt which was returned by Blair Roberts for a 36-yard score.
“Our punt protection requires that the punter step in a certain direction, and it’s toward the long side of the shield,” Curry said. We are not sure if Matt (Hubbard) did that or not. It looked like he did not. They should not be able to come through the shield like that regardless.”
State was able to cut the lead to three again later in the quarter with a Travis Evans 5-yard touchdown run. But that didn’t last for long because another blocked punt by Old Dominion led to a Thomas DeMarco 8-yard touchdown pass to Reid Evans and from that point the Monarchs never looked back.
The offense struggled, especially in the second half because Schlecter could never get anything going. He completed 9-of-27 of his passes, picked off once and sacked four times. This was after he threw for three touchdown passes in the win against Clark Atlanta last week.
Because of his struggles, Curry made the decision to bring in Little who had his struggles as well, going 6-of-17 with two interceptions.
“He did some good things today,” Curry said talking about Schlecter. So we wanted to stay with him a reasonable amount of time before we went to Drew (Little).”
Thompson, on the other hand, was 13-of-21 with 126 yards and one touchdown. He also scored on two rushing touchdowns in the second half to help the Monarchs pull away from the Panthers.
Curry congratulated Old Dominion for the win, but he wished his team would not have made the mistakes which eventually cost them in the end.
“We didn’t find out today just how good they are because we really didn’t test them,” Curry said. “We gave them opportunities at every turn and they took advantage.”
The Panthers fall to 1-1 and will travel to Jacksonville State next Saturday. Kickoff will be at 3:30 p.m.
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