The second year of the Stacey Hairston era is ready to kick off as the Wilmington College football travel to Olivet 1 p.m. Saturday for the team's only non-conference game of the season.
Wilmington, coming off a 0-10 season, faces a Comets team that took a huge step in their second season with a new coach a season ago. After going 0-10 in 2012, Olivet won its first five games of the 2013 season and finished 6-4.
"Olivet is a much improved team, and their goal is to improve off of what they did last year," said Hairston. "Now they have a group of guys that have been playing together for a couple of years, so they have most of their team is juniors and sophomores; its like they are juniors and seniors because they have been together since they were freshmen. So they are confident what they bring to the table right now."
In last season's loss, Comets quarterback Braden Black finished 16-of-19 for 349 yards and six touchdowns. On the season, he completed 62 percent of his passes (191-of-308) with 20 touchdowns and 12 interceptions. If you take out his season-opening performance, Black had 14 touchdowns with 12 picks.
"He is a very impressive quarterback that throws a good ball," said Hairston. "We made it very easy for him. We didn't re-route receivers, and let receivers run free. The tight end had four catches and two catches (against Wilmington), but the rest of the year he had one catch. That tells us we were just that bad. Our goal is for force (Black) to go through his progressions and take away his first read. See if he is able to pick up his number 2, number 3 reads, which what quarterbacks do. But what I see on film is he hasn't had to do that a lot."
He returns his top two receiving threats in Kyle Bryson (46 receptions for 686 yards) and Jason Barbosa (44 receptions for 772 yards). The pair combined for 44 percent of the team's receptions.
Black could be salivating for the opener as Wilmington's top four cornerbacks are all freshmen. Breon Smith-Johnson (Columbus, OH/Africentric) and Margust Charles (Lehigh Acres, FL/Lehigh Acres) will be getting the starting nod. However, Hairston doesn't believe having youth serves as a disadvantage.
Just because we have freshmen playing for us, it's not necessarily a negative thing. "Yes, they lack the experience you love to have, they bring athletic ability, toughness and speed, and that only makes us better," said Hairston. "They need to go through the learning curve and growing pains that most freshmen need go through. But, they are going to get better. We have four very athletic corners that I feel good about."
Defensively, the Comets make the change from a 4-3 defense to a 3-4 defense. However, Hairston believes the principles with remain unchanged. The top four tacklers in Nate Roberts, Curtis French, Trevor Garbow and Beau Langs return for the Comets. The latter of the four, Langs, is Olivet's top cover corner.
Sophomore Austin Jarbo (Gratis, OH/Preble Shawnee) won the quarterback competition, and will making his first career start Saturday.
"Austin still has to grow because, like every other quarterback on our team, he hasn't started a game yet," said Hairston. "He hasn't felt what it will feel like playing from start to finish, and that is what he has to do. That is the growing process for him."
He will have an improved running game and an All-American in Jeremy Duncan to help ease his transition.