Tiger Football Heads to MC Certain of November Goals

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LIVINGSTON, Ala. – In a season of uncertainty, West Alabama head football coach Brett Gilliland and his squad are sure of one thing heading into Saturday's Gulf South Conference game at Mississippi College.

Seventeen Tiger seniors have never experienced a losing season since signing on to play at UWA, and with two games left in 2014, goals set in the heat and humidity of August have been adjusted for the cool crispness of November.

West Alabama is 4-5 with two games to play. The first of those two is Saturday at Mississippi College (1-7) in front of a Choctaw senior day crowd at Robinson-Hale Stadium and an ESPN3 television audience. North Alabama (7-1) visits Tiger Stadium on Thursday, Nov. 13 in another ESPN3 game.

Being a game under .500 heading to Clinton, Miss., UWA has to win its remaining games to avoid the first sub-500 finish since Bobby Wallace's 2008 squad went 4-7. Gilliland and company is well aware that you can't win them both if you don't win the first one.

"Mississippi College's season probably hasn't gone as they had planned and neither has ours," Gilliland said. "There are no easy days in this league and our guys know that. Mississippi College has been playing sound football.

"There are 17 guys who have poured a lot of blood and sweat into this program over the last few years," Gilliland said. "All 60 of our guys making the trip to Clinton are geared toward sending these seniors out in a fashion they deserve."

Of the 17, only quarterback Kyle Caldwell, defensive end Tirelle Cullen, receiver Marcus Brown and long snapper Matthew Humphries have played their entire four-year career at West Alabama. The remainder transferred from various junior college or NCAA Division I programs.

So what is step one toward getting these last two for those 17? According to UWA's first-year head coach, it's not rocket science. Fact is, it involves staying grounded.

"We need to get going back in the right direction with our running game," Gilliland said. "We need to be getting 3 and 4 yards on first down, but we have had a lot of 2-yard runs. If we don't gain 4 yards on first down we rate that as a loss.

"We also have to win first down and third-and-short. We were one-for-four in short yardage situations last week," Gilliland said. "Hopefully this will be a good week for us to get clicking again and get everything going in the right direction."

The West Alabama-Mississippi College rivalry dates back to 1946 and is even at 19-19-2. The Tigers won the last meeting, 41-3, in 2012 and that game broke a 15-year hiatus in the series while MC was not a member of the GSC. The Tigers and Choctaws played every year between 1965 and 1997.

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Players Mentioned

#4 Kyle Caldwell: QB; 5' 7"; Senior

#6 Tirelle Cullen: DE; 6' 2"; Senior

#47 Matthew Humphries: LS; 6' 1"; Senior

#7 Marcus Brown: WR; 6' 2"; Senior

Players Mentioned

#4 Kyle Caldwell
: 5' 7"; Senior
: QB

#6 Tirelle Cullen
: 6' 2"; Senior
: DE

#47 Matthew Humphries
: 6' 1"; Senior
: LS

#7 Marcus Brown
: 6' 2"; Senior
: WR