UT football is back

On Sept. 2, the University of Toledo football team kicked off its 2016 season with a bang in a 31-10 win over Arkansas State. The win was the Rockets’ ninth in a row on the road and Jason Candle’s first regular season win as the head coach.

“We played a really good football team,” Candle said. “To come in and feel the environment, get off to a good start and get a win, it was certainly a good step in the right direction.”

The Rockets dominated the Red Wolves as they outgained 556-226 in total offensive yards. The Toledo defense bucked Mid-American Conference defensive standards by only allowing ten points the whole game.

Junior quarterback Logan Woodside passed for 371 yards, which was a career high for him. Woodside also threw for three touchdowns in the contest.

“I think that the game plan that we had going into it was really good,” Woodside said. “We worked all week. Me, Coach Candle and Coach Wright found a game plan and got it together, and we executed it tonight.”

The three-headed monster of Rocket running backs added heavily to the offensive yard total. Seniors Damion Jones-Moore and Kareem Hunt had 81 and 78 yards respectively, while junior Terry Swanson had 30 yards.

Third-year Cody Thompson led UT in receiving, catching five balls for a career-high 174 yards and a touchdown.

Second-year defensive end Olasunkanmi Adeniyi led the Rocket defense with eight tackles, three tackles for loss and one sack. UT held the Arkansas State running game to 142 yards on 38 carries.

“The defense did a great job,” Adeniyi said. “It was great stopping them on the goal line, I’m just proud of my team.”

The game started out slow for both teams. The scoring didn’t open up until the Red Wolves converted a 40-yard field goal from J.D. Houston to make the score 3-0 for Arkansas State with 1:17 left in the first quarter.

Toledo struck back with 21 unanswered points on three straight possessions to make the score 21-3 off of touchdown passes from Woodside to senior tight end Michael Roberts and Thompson and a touchdown run from Hunt. Roberts caught a five-yard touchdown, Hunt had a 19-yard touchdown and Thompson caught a 16-yard touchdown.

UT padded their lead when Woodside threw his second touchdown to Roberts in the third quarter to make the score 31-3 in favor of the Rockets.

Arkansas State recorded their first touchdown of the season with 11:41 left in the game when junior running back Armond Weh-Weh charged into the end zone from two yards out to make the score 31-10.

“We’re growing,” Candle said. “We’ll see; we got a very good opponent next week, a Maine team that comes to us. They should’ve beat UConn last night, so it doesn’t get any easier. We know the adage of football that you grow from week one to week two; we got to get back home and get ready to handle a tough team.”

UT will come home to the Glass Bowl to take on Maine in their home opener on Sept. 10 starting at 7 p.m.