Last week, in covering Charlotte, I waxed rhapsodic on the listless feeling after a Cinderella story ends. The 49ers’ case is one, having bowled for the first time in their existence and now facing immense pressure to run it back. And the rest of sports, college basketball in particular, underwent a similar now-what haze when the coronavirus effectively shuttered, well, everything, bringing an abrupt end to storybook seasons like those of Dayton, San Diego State, Baylor, Rutgers, Penn State, Utah State, and on and on.*
*Personally, without evidence to the contrary, I’ll probably wonder for the rest of my life if an Oklahoma State team that nearly beat Baylor and did beat Texas Tech and Texas could have upset Kansas and gate-crashed the NCAA Tournament.
For those wondering where to go next, what to do when it’s all over for better or worse (or, as this year, for naught), UAB might prove a good example.
The 2018 Blazers had no right to do much of anything special. UAB had never topped 10 wins in a season, had never won the conference championship, had only just finished their first winning season since 2004. Oh, and the team didn’t exist in 2015 and 2016, only brought back by the finagling of forever-beloved coach Bill Clark.
Then UAB went 11-3, won eight straight, and took the C-USA championship trophy home thanks to the second-most-important too-many-men-on-the-field penalty of the last two years. Amazing, right?
But that’s 2018. What about the year after?
To UAB’s credit, they dealt with huge losses admirably. The Blazers could easily have dropped near .500, what with the departures of quarterback Tyler Johnston III’s top receiving targets and his offensive line. Given that they also saw, well, most of the defence dissipate, one could’ve foreseen a step back.
UAB did step back…all the way to 9-5.
The defence wasn’t as world-beating as in 2018, sitting 28th in opponents’ PPG rather than seventh as it had done the year before. And the offence was markedly worse, tanking from 60th to 102nd in points per game. But UAB held on to win their division and come within a whisker of another 10-win season.
Now, however, the Blazers face a situation they’ve never found themselves in before: they are no longer the underdog, and in fact are favoured to win C-USA. How Clark, Johnston, and a dominant defence will deal with that pressure will define UAB’s chase for the championship and perhaps even an undefeated season.*
*Yes, Miami is on the schedule. TERSE puts them a couple of spots behind the Blazers. Welcome to 2020, where one of college football’s most historic programs ranks behind a G5 team that wasn’t around three years ago.
Offence
2019 TERSE: 35.7 (97th)
2020 SP+ Returning Production: 82% (14th)
You’ve got to feel bad for Tyler Johnston III, who was actually pretty good last year. Johnston completed 59% of passes for 2250 yards and a 17:15 TD-to-INT ratio. Sure, it’s more of a James Winston line than a Tom Brady one, but it’s important to consider that Johnston got very little help from his receiving corps.
In fairness to them, though, most of the receivers on UAB’s roster were young replacements for departing veterans who’d lived through the two-year drought. There were basically three players Johnston threw to consistently; each topped 550 yards, while the next-best player had just 166.
Austin Watkins was far and away the most common target, with 57 catches (23 more than Myron Mitchell) for 1092 yards (484 more than Kendall Parham) and six touchdowns (30% of the team’s total receiving touchdowns). Mitchell (554 yards, 4 touchdowns) and Parham (608 yards, 6 touchdowns) were also excellent for the Blazers last year, and Parham is the only one of the trio to graduate. Johnston should get more help from tight end Hayden Pittman (166 yards receiving) and wide receiver Markus Grossman (100 yards receiving) next year as well, upgrading a passing offence that was 94th in FBS last year.
Johnston also put up decent numbers on the ground as the team’s fourth-best rusher, trailing Spencer Brown (566 yards), Jermaine Brown Jr (446 yards), and Lucious Stanley (414 yards). All three return for 2020, and Brown Jr and Stanley will both be back for 2021.
Defence
2019 TERSE: 69.7 (32nd)
2020 SP+ Returning Production: 80% (20th)
UAB’s defence has thrown together a run as one of the most consistently fantastic units in the Group of 5, and they figure to get even better in 2020. Whether they can scrape the highs of that miraculous 2018 team, which sat seventh in opponents’ points per game, has yet to be seen, but even TERSE, which is typically low on G5 teams in the preseason, is optimistic, keeping UAB 32nd for 2020.
The most dynamic duo on the Blazers is probably Kristopher Moll and Jordan Smith, both notching at least 14 tackles for loss and eight sacks last year. With both back on the field for 2020 to lead a defence that could elbow its way into best-in-FBS contention, watching UAB on this side of the ball should be a delight.
Of course, there’s room for improvement. For what it’s worth, UAB’s defence would’ve finished 13th in points per game if they’d only kept it up against FAU and App State in the season’s last two games. Alas, they did not, giving up 49 and 31 respectively in a pair of losses.
Otherwise, the theme was a similar one: the team was usually good because of its defence, and when they weren’t so good, they usually lost. UAB also gave up 30 to Tennessee and 37 to Southern Miss in back-to-back mid-season losses, and only against WKU was the defence decent in defeat, losing 20-13.
On the bright side, though, they cleaned up otherwise, with opponents averaging just 15 points in losses to UAB. If the Blazers can aspire to anything like that in big games next year, they’ll have a decent shot at going undefeated.
UAB’s wild rollercoaster seems to have settled down slightly, and the Blazers are set to lead C-USA for years to come. Bill Clark’s loyalty has already pulled the team through a shutdown, and since returning to the field, Clark’s team has yet to lose at home and has gone 15 games over .500 in just 41 games played.
Transforming their Cinderella story into a future as a consistent G5 titan would be an impressive parlay to pull off, one many other teams struggle with, and the Blazers are set up to do it.
There is, of course, immense pressure facing that attempt. Now that UAB’s pulled off one of the greatest comebacks in sports history and won the conference, all else is disappointing. Many teams have faltered in that limelight.
Not this one. And as UAB targets the New Year’s Six as a dark horse, their happily ever after looks set to stick for a while.
CORN 