Bowl Preview: Troy, CMU bring potent offenses

The winner of the GMAC Bowl between No. 25 CMU and Troy will bring bragging rights to its mid-major conference.

While Central (11-2) has won three of the last four Mid-American Conference championships, Troy (9-3) has won at least a part of the last four Sun Belt Conference championships.
The 8 p.m. game Jan. 6 in Mobile, Ala., will bring two programs that have sustained success in their respective conferences together.

“Pitting two conference champions against each other doesn’t happen too often in the non-BCS games,” said junior linebacker Nick Bellore. “It might be the only non-(Bowl Championship Series) game where you got two conference champions going head-to-head.”

Prior to Sunday, there was speculation from various media outlets that CMU could potentially play a BCS school such as UCLA.

But senior quarterback Dan LeFevour, the Football Bowl Subdivision’s total touchdowns leader (148) playing in his last collegiate game, said there is no disappointment with the matchup against another mid-major school.

“They have pretty much the same thing going that we did, where they didn’t lose a game in conference … They’re kind of in a similar situation to us,” he said. “They’d probably like to play a bigger school, too.”

Shootout

One common bond the Chippewas and Trojans share lies in their ability to put points on the board.

Both teams score about 33 points per game. CMU ranks 16th in the FBS, scoring 33.2 points per game, while Troy ranks 18th, scoring 33.1 per game.

Bellore said the defense will have to make a few key stops to give CMU’s offense the edge.
“With the offense we have, I think it’s always come down to (the defense),” he said. “When we haven’t gotten it done in the past, we usually don’t win. When we do, we usually take care of business.”

The Trojans are led on offense by senior quarterback Levi Brown, who has completed 64.7 percent of his passes for 3,868 yards, 22 touchdowns and nine interceptions. Troy has the fourth-best passing offense (331 yards per game) and the third-best total offense (478.5) in the nation.
Brown’s favorite receiver, junior Jerrel Jernigan, has 947 yards and four touchdowns. Junior wide receiver Tebiarus Gill has 553 yards and six touchdowns.

“There’s a lot of great athletes on the field for them,” Bellore said.

Defensively, however, CMU holds a distinct statistical advantage. The Chippewas have the nation’s 17th-best scoring defense, giving up 17.2 points per game. Troy ranks outside the nation’s top 85 teams (86th — 28.6).

Away from home

The last time CMU played a bowl game outside Michigan was the Las Vegas Bowl in 1994, where it lost 52-24 to the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

CMU has played in the Motor City Bowl — now called the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl — at Ford Field in Detroit in every year since 2006. It is 1-2 in those bowl games.

Now, the roles are reversed, as the team plays a Troy team that resides in Troy, Ala., the same state the GMAC Bowl is played (Mobile, Ala.).

“The Motor City Bowl (was) a great venue and it’s a great event, and I couldn’t have asked for anything more for the past three years,” LeFevour said. “But I’m excited to go to the GMAC. I’m excited to travel once more with this football team.”

This will mark CMU’s ninth game away from Kelly/Shorts Stadium in Mount Pleasant.
“We want to end this thing the right way, and we want to win this last one,” LeFevour said.