Last season, Kennesaw State won one game away from home. The Owls have tripled that production in three road games this season.
“This year we have this mindset of being a road warrior,” safety Derrick Farrow said. “Being able to go on people’s turf and win there. It’s big for us.”
Sitting at 3-0 in opposing teams’ stadiums, KSU (5-2, 1-1 Big South) will travel for the second-to-last time this year as it searches for the second conference road win in program history, when it battles Monmouth (4-4, 0-3) on Saturday.
After winning the first game in program history in Johnson City, Tenn., last year, the Owls struggled away from home for the rest of the season, losing four consecutive games away from Fifth Third Bank Stadium, including three to Big South opponents.
After picking up a win in Boiling Springs, N.C., over Gardner-Webb (3-5, 1-1) KSU now sets its sights on West Long Branch, N.J., and a Hawks team that lost 35-7 in its only other conference home game and is coming off a 52-28 defeat at the hands of Liberty (4-3, 2-0).
In 2015, the Owls beat two teams in their conference: Gardner-Webb and Monmouth. After already conquering one of these foes on the road, KSU now has a chance to push its road record to 4-0 with a victory over the other. But although a fair amount of players have returned for the Hawks, it is not quite the same squad that coach Brian Bohannon’s team knocked off last year.
Injuries to running backs Lavon Chaney and Ed Royds prevented them from taking the field against the Owls the first time around. Add in the maturation of quarterback Cody Williams, who was a freshman last season, and KSU is looking at a different offense than the one it held to 13 points a year ago.
“Offensively, they’re really balanced in what they do,” Bohannon said. “They got two good receivers, really good running back … they got a big offensive line. And at times they’ll try to do what I think most people want to do against us, kind of mash us a little bit.”
In the previous matchup with Monmouth, KSU allowed 187 yards on the ground, but was able to force two turnovers to keep the Monmouth offense at bay. But that is in the past.
The Owls are not at all concerned with what already happened. Players said their focus is only on what lies ahead. Guys said they are not even thinking about what happened last week, so it’s hard to imagine a performance from last October means much to anyone.
Players all said that a focus of this team is leaving last week in the past. Still, players also said that when they haven’t lost on the road, it does give them a boost going into the next contest outside of Kennesaw.
“For the simple fact that we’re 3-0 we pretty confident going on the road,” Dez Billingslea said. “That’s something that everybody is looking forward to now, is playing on the road, and kind of ruining people’s feel at home. For some reason people keep scheduling us on homecoming — I don’t know why. But I mean, they keep scheduling us, we’re going to keep disappointing them.”
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