Football team to start season against New Mexico StateBy Charlie Leffler

When sports fans hear the name Aggies in the mention of football, their minds automatically jump to Texas A&M. They conjure of up images of hard fought battles and a team that will literally run you over. Rarely do sports fans associate the same fervor for the sport with New Mexico State. And that is one of the fears that Louisville coach John L. Smith has to face coming into Thursday night’s game.

With the Cardinals returning this season as the C-USA defending champions and arch rival Kentucky lurking just around the corner, it could be easy for the Cards to overlook NMS who went 3-8 last season.

Another factor that could lead to these Aggies being overlooked is that they lost 11 starters from that squad.

Yet, when Smith wants to grab his players attention, all he should have to mention is two words, option and Army. Like Army, NMS runs the option and nearly every player on the team should be able to recall the embarrassing first half blow-out that Armyês option laid on them two year ago. The option offense is something that has seemed to have plagued U of L defenses for decades.

Some of the Cardinals feel it is to having such a team first on their schedule. “It might help a little,” said U of L senior linebacker Jeromy Freitag. “We’ve had a little more time. That will be a fun game. They’ll be a lot of running.” The Aggies also have the advantage of having two-year starter K. C. Ensminger at quarterback who has become the NMS all time leading rushing quarterback. The team also returns its entire receiving corp and tight ends.

But where the Aggies could most likely hurt the Cards is on the ground. Last yearês team rushed for a school record 3000 yards on the season. So they will try to take advantage of U of Lês youth in the defensive middle.

Where the Cardinal defense should be able to take advantage is with the NMS offensive line only returning two starters. In turn, the Aggies’ youth could provide a field day for the likes of Cardinals Dewayne White, Chad Lee, Michael Josiah, Michael Brown, and company.

On defense the Aggies could be in for a long day. The team that gave up 32.5 points per game lost five starters including all but one of its secondary. U of L quarterback Dave Ragone and his talented corp of receivers could have a field day. NMS will field one of the most interesting names in football, Siddeeq Shabazz as a new starting safety. It is a name the Papa John’s announcer Sean Moth may end up having a field day with.

NMS showed no lack at being able to put points on the board last year. The Aggie offense managed to generate 26.2 points per game over the entire last season. Yet the eye opener is that they averaged 35.25 over their last eight games.

The two teams only played one common opponent last year and that was Army. Both teams defeated the Black Knights by a similar margin. The Aggies won 42-23 at home while the Cardinals won 38-17 at Papa John’s.

As far as playing their first game in August, the Cardinals are ready to play but uncertain of whether it will help or hurt them. “Wait ’til after it’s over, then I’l tell you,” head coach John L. Smith joked. “It’s a game and we have to go play it.”

The Cardinals used last week’s scrimmage in Papa John’s as a precursor to this week’s contest by having it in the stadium at the same starting time. -We tried to mock everything that we could do,” Smith said, “from our clap to we walk through, all the things that we do in house and our preparation.” The coach cited that a lot of the players had never been through those things before. “We tried to do all of those things exactly like we’re going to do on our game day.”Smith said that it would be difficult for his players not to look ahead to their next game at Kentucky, but the Aggies may have the same feelings as well. Next week they will be playing at Texas which is ranked in the top-5 in the polls.