Electric Cardinal Offense Too Much for Bobcat’s Secondary

By Kyle Owen and Jacob Aromy
Sports Director and Sports Reporter

Quarterback Cameron Ward threw for 376 yards and four touchdowns against the Bobcats Saturday as the Incarnate Word Cardinals upset the Bobcats, 42-34 in Bobcat Stadium.

The four-touchdown performance for Ward improved the Cardinal’s record to 2-1 and handed Texas State their second loss of the year, moving the Bobcat’s record to 1-2

The Cardinals took the lead from the Bobcats for the final time with 7:07 left in the game and never looked back. The Bobcats managed to find three extra points with under a minute to go, but not until after Incarnate Word extended their lead to 11 with 2:48 and nearly no time for the Bobcats to make anything happen. Ultimately, Coach Jake Spavital blames the loss on himself, the coaching staff, and the team as a whole.

“We got to minimize our mistakes, that’s completely on us in this game,” Spavital said. “We’ve got to be better and we all know that game is on us, we’ve got to play better. I know we had 25 guys out before the game, but that’s not an excuse for anything.”

Defensively for the Bobcats, they’ve shown a lot of success. Even with the loss, freshman safety Zion Childress had an interception on Incarnate Word’s Ward. But, with the absence of Caeveon Patton, Jarron Morris, London Harris, Eric Sutton, and Tory Spears, Texas State was missing a lot of key players on defense.

It didn’t help when sophomore nickelback DeJordan Mask left the game early with a targeting penalty. The Bobcat secondary had to rely on practice squad members.

“We lost the game as the DB’s and the defense,” Childress said. “That’s why we practice [with them], a lot can go down at any moment. We’ve got to be ready to play… If we work harder at practice, we don’t have a problem today.”

The Bobcats will be on the road next Saturday when they travel to Ypsilanti, MI to face the Eastern Michigan Eagles at 1 p.m.. This will be Texas State’s second and final non-conference road game where they will look to improve to 2-0 in those games and ultimately move their record to 2-2 on the year.

Featured Image by Khalid Alhareth