Liberty wins, but Rocco’s not happy

By Chris Lang
Sports writer
Published: September 6, 2008

When Liberty football coach Danny Rocco began to discuss his team’s 44-27 victory over Glenville State Saturday night at Williams Stadium, he was careful to break the discussion into two distinct segments.

There was the competitive part of the game, in which Liberty outclassed the Pioneers and raced to a 34-7 halftime lead, thanks not to sustained drives but brief bursts of offensive excellence.

Then there was the ugly part, the second half that resembled an NFL preseason game. Rocco substituted liberally, giving substantial playing time to players who don’t make the two-deep on a weekly basis.

Suddenly, a laugher turned into a more respectable outcome for the Division II visitors from West Virginia. Liberty led 44-14 with 9:55 left, but Glenville State piled up 141 yards of offense in the fourth quarter against a Flames’ defense that looked like it had already checked out for the night.

Unacceptable, Rocco said.

“The second half, I was just really disappointed with our performance, on both sides of the ball,” Rocco said. “Unable to really execute offensively, unable to really drive the football, unable to connect in the passing game, very few big plays. Defensively, we were just awful. We were unable to tackle. I really felt like we were out of position in the second half. It’s a major concern of mine.”

Liberty (2-0) hasn’t lost to a DII team since 1993, so Rocco took a big-picture view of a game that was never really expected to be competitive. The Flames toyed with the Pioneers (1-1) in the first half, scoring touchdowns on five of their eight drives. Brock Smith threw two interceptions (one went right through the hands of tight end Corey Rasberry and was picked by Eric Turner), but he also connected with Dominic Bolden for touchdown passes of 72 and 28 yards.

Glenville’s only score came on a 56-yard Jerry Seymour run, as the senior tailback used an initial speed burst and a sharp cutback to blow by several Liberty defenders.

Seymour, who was a former all-MAC tailback at Central Michigan until legal problems forced him to leave school, finished with 145 yards on 15 carries.

“I give him credit,” said Flames defensive end Daryl Robertson, the former Liberty High standout who had seven tackles and led LU with 1½ sacks. “He had good balance and good footwork. I can’t take anything away from him. He was real shifty.”

Bolden was the star of the game for the Flames, finishing with 265 all-purpose yards (88 receiving, 87 on kick returns and 82 on punt returns, including his first career punt-return touchdown).

On the first touchdown, Bolden was ahead of Smith’s short screen pass, but he managed to get a hand on it and tip it back to himself. Downfield, Eugene Rogers got in front of a Glenville defensive back to spring the block that sealed the touchdown.

“Gene’s the most tenacious blocker we have,” Bolden said.

The second touchdown reception, which put LU up 34-7, displayed the sort of rapport Smith and Bolden have developed in their fourth year playing together. A Glenville cornerback was sitting on Bolden’s original route in man coverage when the defense the Pioneers were playing called for the corner to be playing a soft zone.

“There’s no reason why he should have converted that,” said Smith, who completed 7 of 11 passes for 202 yards and three touchdowns. “But we were on the same page. He made the right read. With the defense they had in there, a Cover 3, that corner should have been soft. For Dominic to be able to see he wasn’t, and convert it? It shows how much he’s matured. He trusts his speed and trusts me with the ball. You’ve got to be able to adjust on the fly.”

With Rashad Jennings out with a broken finger on his right hand, and Zach Terrell left to try to solve Glenville’s blitzing defense on his own, the Flames missed having Jennings’ punishing presence inside. The Pioneers did a solid job plugging the middle, making Terrell work hard for his 110 yards. Terrell scored a first-quarter touchdown, running his streak of consecutive games with a touchdown to 18.

“They had a real good plan,” Terrell said. “They were stacking the box, and it was hard to find creases.”

Jennings said after the game that he would definitely play next week at Western Carolina, which will be the Flames’ first game this season against a Division I opponent. Rocco hammered home the point in the locker room that next week represents a “one-game season,” as Liberty plays the Catamounts before a desperately needed bye week.

“I took at as we need to be prepared more than we’ve ever been prepared before,” Smith said. “We’ve got to act like it’s the only game we have to play. We can’t think ahead. We can’t think about the past. It’s tough to do, but if we prepare ourselves well enough, there’s nobody who should be able to stop us.”