Raiders go bowling for second straight year on The Murfreesboro Post

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Raiders go bowling for second straight year

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By: JONATHAN HERRMANN, jherrmann@murfreesborpost.com

Posted: Sunday, December 12, 2010 6:58 am

Raiders go bowling for second straight year | Sports, MTSU, Blue Raiders, Football

MT Head Coach Rick Stockstill cheers on the Blue Raiders at the New Orleans Bowl in January. Stockstill will get another chance to cheer on his team at the GoDaddy.com Bowl Jan. 6. MTSU Athletics

One month ago Middle Tennessee had a record of 3-6, needing to win out against conference opponents to become bowl eligible.

The task was a tall one for the team after an up and down season that started off with a four-game suspension of star quarterback Dwight Dasher.

The Raiders also faced a number of injuries on the offensive line, not starting the same five in consecutive weeks until the last three games.

“The first four games we had a different quarterback every week,” head coach Rick Stockstill said. “We have five Saturdays when we didn’t have a game because of Tuesday or Thursday games and we didn’t have any consistency.”

Today, the team has a .500 record and is set to play in the GoDaddy.com bowl after completing a three-game win streak with an upset win over Florida International.

This will be the first time MTSU has appeared in a bowl game in consecutive seasons since joining the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision and the third bowl in five years.

“I’m proud of this team. There was a lot of adversity we faced this year,” Stockstill said. “When they look back I think they learned a lot of lessons that will help them in life this football season.”

The team’s success this season adds to the impressive resume Stockstill has built in his time at the university.

Of the 120 FBS teams, only 66 have gone to a bowl three times in a five year period and only 51 have gone in back-to-back seasons. In the non-automatic qualifying conferences, like the Sun Belt, the numbers are 20 and 14.

The Raiders belong to this limited number, with all of these bowl appearances coming under Stockstill. Middle Tennessee’s first bowl appearance in FBS came in his first year as coach, its first bowl win came last season.

Maybe the most telling statistic is that in each of the four seasons directly before the hiring of coach Stockstill, the team had losing records.

More importantly, his Raider teams are making strides both on and off the field. When MTSU hired Stockstill the school had been penalized by the NCAA for having one of the worst Academic Progress Rates in the country, limiting the number of scholarship players for Stockstill’s first three seasons. The school now has one of the best.

“It shows guys that they can accomplish the same goals here that they can at any other schools,” he said. “We’re graduating our players. They can come right here and get what they want. Those stats, that’s pretty impressive in five years.”

The Blue Raiders will face MAC conference champions Miami (Ohio) in the bowl game. The team resumes practicing late Thursday with the completion of finals for the semester of classes.

Coach Stockstill has a simple game plan in getting his team ready to play.

“Middle Tennessee State University. That will be the focus. We have to keep worrying about ourselves and continue to get better. We have to be concerned with us.”

Players will condition during the week of finals before resuming practice and will be give time off for the holidays before joining again on Dec. 26.

The bowl will be played at 7 P.M. Thursday, Jan. 6 at Ladd-Peebles Stadium in Mobile, Ala., and will be televised on ESPN.

Tagged under Blue Raiders, Football, MTSU, Sports

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By: MichelleWillard on 12/12/10
The headline of this story originally read "Raiders go bowling for third straight year." The Raiders received a bowl invite for the third time in four years and for the firs time in the program's history, two consecutive years. The Post regrets the error.