It has been two years since the Flames went down to Clinton, South Carolina and saw their visions of their 1st playoff berth slip away at the hands of Presbyterian.  Its time for payback against the Blue Hose.

Of course it won’t be as much fun to take down the Hose now that Bobby Bentley is gone as head coach and the much less colorful Harold Nichols is in his place.

Courtesy: gobluehose.com

In his first season as head coach at his alma mater, he suffered through an 0-11 season.  There is no glossing over that type of performance.  Only twice all season did the Blue Hose manage to stay with 10 points of an opponent.  The good news, if there could be any, is that Nichols was able to get a lot of young players some valuable game experience as he tries to build up a program that has clearly hit rock bottom.

Courtesy: gobluehose.com

Offensively the bright note for the Hose in ’09 was the surprising success of true freshman running back Lance Byrd.  The 5′ 8″ speedster from Florida racked up 700 yards on the ground at a clip of 5.5 yards a carry.  He figures to get even more opportunities as a sophomore this fall.  With Tim Webb now gone, junior Brandon Miley will no longer have to split snaps at quarterback for PC.  He threw for 1736 yards with 11 TDs & 16 INTs last season including a pair of TDs passes against LU in garbage time.  His top returning receive is Patrick McKoy who hauled in 47 passes for 615 yards and 4 TDs in ’09.

Defensively the Hose gave up a whopping 40 points & 478 yards a game.  So they will have to turn the corner quickly in the 2nd year of the Nichols era.  Their top two tacklers are back for 2010.  Junior cornerback Justin Bethel led the Hose with 79 tackles in 11 games this past season.  And senior linebacker Derek Brown had a season-high 8 tackles against Liberty and will provide leadership upfront.

Prognosis for PC:  Plenty more difficulty notching wins in 2010.  Nichols appears to be building for longterm success.  But you have to wonder how long the PC big shots will give him to run things around.  Liberty should exact a great deal of revenge in Clinton.