Macon — For a coach who claims to have many questions about his own youthful team, Georgia Southern's Chris Hatcher is quick to backhand the suggestion that his Eagles will open the season as an asterisk in the way of Georgia's pre-ordained march to national title.

You ask, he'll answer.

Will the Division I-AA Eagles have a prayer in their season opener Aug. 30 at big, bad Georgia, which figures to be ranked No. 1, 2 or 3 in the preseason?

"We're going to go up there to win," Hatcher said Tuesday at the Peachstate Pigskin Preview, a gathering of the state's college football coaches at the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. "I tell our team that if I don't think we have a chance to win, we won't go.

"We always expect to win. It's unfortunate that we're going to have a bunch of freshmen playing the first game, and [Georgia is] going to be ranked No. 1 or 2. I wish they were going to have a down season. But we've had a great offseason. I think part of that is because the Georgia game is on the horizon."

For all the fuss about the Bulldogs, who return nine starters on defense and seven on offense from a team that finished ranked No. 2 last season, and a potentially brutal schedule, who mentions Georgia Southern?

This shouldn't surprise anybody.

GSU has 74 freshmen, redshirt freshmen and sophomores on its roster, and lost eight starters — including All-America quarterback and Walter Payton Award winner Jayson Foster — on offense, and two on defense.

The Eagles were 7-4 last season, Hatcher's first at the school, but missed the I-AA playoffs for the second season in a row.

But there's this: the Eagles not only beat Appalachian State, which later went on to defend its I-AA national title, but did it in Boone, N.C., ending a 30-game home winning streak. You remember App State? The team that opened the season with a win at Michigan?

So Hatcher was talking about how App State had more speed at some positions than Michigan, and how when that happens, a few big plays at the right times, and couple of breaks and you just might have an upset.

GSU senior defensive back Chris Covington, a Brookwood High graduate who knows or has played against several Bulldogs in the past, took the middle road Tuesday.

"We want to go up there and put on a good showing, maybe shock a few people," he said. "But what I think is the team has really bought into coach Hatcher's philosophy."

And Hatcher's philosophy is to be multiple.

He'll have to solve a quandary at quarterback, where redshirt freshman Lee Chapple finished spring practice No. 1, and former Peach County High star Antonio Henton — a recent sophomore transfer from Ohio State — is unproven.

"Some of the questions I can't answer because half our team in the spring, they were going to their [high school] senior proms," he said. "Lee Chapple had an outstanding spring. Antonio's got his work cut out, and I'm not naming him the savior of the program by any stretch of the imagination.

"He's a competitor, and he'll start at No. 4 on the depth chart, and he's got about 26 days to work himself up to become the starter."

Don't be fooled. Hatcher has plans. Maybe he's just not talking about them.

"A big thing when you play a team like Georgia and on paper you're over-matched, you've got two ways to look at it," he said. "You go in there and come up with a bunch of wrinkles to try to throw them off, and try to get a big play. But if you do that, then you hurt preparation for the remainder of the season.

"Or, you go in and do what you're going to do for the whole season and try to improve. You may not have the big-play capability. You've got to come up with a fine line. We're going to have to go in there from step one, and just get our team where they can do the base things."