EAST STROUDSBURG Warriors (1-1, 0-1 PSAC East) at EDINBORO Fighting Scots (0-2, 0-1 PSAC West)
Saturday, September 20, 2014 l 12:00 noon 
Sox Harrison Stadium (6,000) l Edinboro, Pa.
Radio:  WFSE 88.9 FM 
 
Edinboro Game Notes
East Stroudsburg Game Notes
PSAC Weekly Football Release

Date:  Saturday, September 20, 201 4
Site:  Edinboro, Pa.
Stadium:  Sox Harrison Stadium
Kickoff: 12:00 noon
Next:  Saturday, September 27 at California (Pa.), 12 noon
Live Stats:  http://www.sidearmstats.com/edinboro/football/?

Series History
Series Record:  East Stroudsburg 11-6
Last Meeting:  2011 – East Stroudsburg 27, Edinboro 26
 
Radio: WFSE FM 88.9 -- The Edinboro-East Stroudsburg game can be heard live on WFSE FM 88.9, with Ron Raymond on the play-by-play and Mike Fenner providing the color commentary. To access the internet broadcast go to http://wfseradio.com

TV:  SPORTSfever Television Netowrk will broadcast the Edinboro-East Stroudsburg game, the first of four Edinboro games to be aired in 2014. Dan Watson and Greg Gania will provide the commentary.
The coverage for the game this week:
LIVE
ESPN3
WNEP 16.2 (Blue Ridge 131)
WPMT 43.3 (Comcast 244, Blue Ridge 126)
WPHL 17.4 (Philadelphia)
WETM 18.2 (Elmira)
Blue Ridge Cable 113-13-11
SAME DAY DELAY
Fox Sports Ohio -- 12 midnight
REPLAY
Fox Sports Ohio -- Mon., Sept, 22 -- 12 Noon
Root Sports -- Tues., Oct. 7 -- 6 pm
Twitter updates at @BoroAthletics
 
The Game Story
After opening the 2014 campaign with a 38-24 loss at 16th-ranked Carson-Newman, Edinboro had another long trip last Saturday, and came away a 47-21 loser at Shippensburg. Now the Fighting Scots face an East Stroudsburg team which was picked to finish second in the PSAC East Coaches Preseason Poll while looking to avoid the first 0-3 start since the 1955 team lost its first five contests. The 1973 and '78 Edinboro editions opened the year with ties before losing their next three games, while the 1966 team had a tie in its second game. 
 
Like last week's Shippensburg game, the East Stroudsburg contest now counts in the PSAC standings.  Earlier this year the PSAC decided to count all games against PSAC competition prior to the PSAC Championship in the league standings.

East Stroudsburg comes in with a 1-1 record. The Warriors opened the year with a 43-35 win at LIU Post, but were run over by Slippery Rock in last week's home opener 56-24. The Rock ran for a school-record 456 yards.  ESU head coach Denny Douds is in his 41st season at the helm and 49th year as a member of the ESU staff. He owns a 245-172-3 career record, ranking third among active coaches, second active Division II coaches, and tied for 22nd in NCAA history in wins. The 420 games coached leads all active NCAA coaches.

The Fighting Scots returned five starters on offense and five on defense from last year's 5-6 squad, but the story in week number one was the large number of players who made their inital start. Both the offense and the defense had five players starting for the first time. That included two true freshmen and four redshirt freshman.

The offense has a definite new look under first-year offensive coordinator Mike Miller, whose resume' includes a stint as the offensive coordinator of the Arizona Cardinals. The unit welcomes back quarterback Cody Harris, who ranks among the career leaders in numerous statistical categories but played in just the first two games a year ago before suffering a season-ending injury. Edinboro averaged 35 points and 454.5 total yards in the first two games but just 19.6 points and 283.1 total yards over the final nine contests.  Harris was a second team All-PSAC West selection in 2011 and '12, and WR Ben Eisel was a second-team selection a year ago.   

Edinboro was picked to finish sixth in the PSAC West in the coaches' preseason poll for the second straight year. The Eastern Division coaches predicted that East Stroudsburg would finish second following last year's 7-4 record. It is the highest preseason ranking for ESU since 2005. 

Week number one saw the Fighting Scots face a bruising veer option attack run by Carson-Newman. Last week Edinboro had try to slow down a multi-faceted Shippensburg offense that ended up rushing for 246 yards and passing for 233 more. Now they must contend with ESU quarterback Matt Soltes. The junior has already accumulated over 6,000 yards passing and 1,000 yards rushing.

Edinboro has not fared well in recent home openers. The Fighting Scots have lost their last two home openers, falling 47-35 to 15th-ranked Bloomsburg a year ago and 24-14 to California(Pa.) in 2012.     

The Carson-Newman contest was the first of three Thursday games the Fighting Scots will play in 2014. Edinboro will also face local rivals Gannon and Mercyhurst on Thursday evenings. The Scots will host Gannon on Thursday, October 16 in the first Thursday night contest at Sox Harrison Stadium since 2008. A week later Edinboro will play for the first time at Erie Veterans Stadium since 1982 as Mercyhurst hosts the Scots on Thursday, October 23.

The All-Time Series
East Stroudsburg leads 11-6
The Edinboro-East Stroudsburg series first began in 1967, with the Warriors winning the first four games in the series. That included wins in the 1975 (24-20) and 1982 (24-22) PSAC Championship Games. They have since met twice in the NCAA Division II Playoffs, with both contests taking place at East Stroudsburg. In 2004 the Warriors claimed a 36-32 decision, while in 2009 Edinboro prevailed 31-16. This marks the first meeting between the two teams since 2011, and the first at Sox Harrison Stadium since 2010.   
 
The Last Meeting
2011 -- East Stroudsburg 27, Edinboro 26
In an extremely heartbreaking loss for the Fighting Scots in the 2011 season finale, East Stroudsburg scored the final 14 points to shock Edinboro.  Trailing 26-13 early in the fourth quarter, Kendrick Williams capped a 13-play, 67-yard drive with a one-yard TD run to pull ESU within six points with 9:07 to play. The Scots appeared on the verge of wrapping the win up, but on 3rd-and-goal from the ESU one the Scots' Brian Davis fumbled into the end zone with the Warriors recovering with under two minutes to play. The Warriors proceeded to drive 80 yards, scoring the winning touchdown as time expired. Ray Wagner scrambled and found Dusty Reed for a 21-yard TD. Taylor Groff's extra point provided the winning margin. Edinboro finished with 416 yards in total offense, one less than East Stroudsburg. Cody Harris completed 21 of 29 passes for 234 yards but left the game in the second half with an injury. David Bostic caught 11 passes for 91 yards. D'Andrea Vaughn led the ground game with 64 yards on seven carries, including a 44-yard touchdown jaunt. Michael Battles scored on a one-yard run. The Fighting Scots also scored on a 30-yard interception return by Kenny Pettis and field goals of 29 and 38 yards by Alex Romanias.  Eric Deery led ESU in rushing with 106 yards on 11 carries. Wagner completed 20 of 39 passes for 215 yards, with Reed catching seven of those passes for 98 yards.
 
Last Week
Shippensburg 47, Edinboro 21
Edinboro grabbed a 7-0 lead after one quarter on a 19-yard pass from Cody Harris to Darren Massey, but the Fighting Scots couldn't slow down the high-powered Shippensburg offense after that. The Red Raiders ran off 33 unanswered points and ended the day with 479 yards. Harris accounted for all three of Edinboro's scores as he added an eight-yard touchdown pass to freshman Kolbe Hughes, his first career touchdown, and scored on a six-yard run. Harris completed 29 of 36 passes for 300 yards, his ninth career 300-yard game. Massey enjoyed the best game of his career with 11 receptions, two shy of the school record, for 161 yards.
 
Slippery Rock 56, East Stroudsburg 24
Slippery Rock ran for a school record 456 yards to spoil East Stroudsburg's home opener. SRU ran the ball 78 times and finished the day with 587 total yards compared to  412 for the Warriors. Robert Healy gave ESU a 7-0 lead on the game's first possession with 19-yard scoring run, but by halftime SRU was up 35-17. The lead would balloon to 56-17 before the Warriors scored late in the game. Matt Soltes completed 20 of 47 passes for 297 yards with a touchdown, but he threw three interceptions. Healy ended the night with 86 yards on 15 rushes and also caught a team-high 6 passes for 54 yards.  Tight end Steven Jones had 4 catches for 101 yards.  

The Coaches
Scott Browning (Ohio State '81) took over as Edinboro's 13th head coach on January 5, 2006, and in his first six seasons he tied the record for most wins by a coach during that period.  Browning is in his ninth season with a 54-37 record, and is in his 29th season as a member of the Edinboro staff.  With last year's season-opening 35-34 win over Walsh, he became the third coach at Edinboro to reach 50 wins, joining Tom Hollman and Bill McDonald.   The win over Clarion was his 54th, tying him with McDonald for second in career victories.  Browning was certainly no stranger to Fighting Scot football when he was hired as head coach, serving as an assistant coach for the previous twenty years. While at Edinboro he has coached the offensive linemen, defensive backs and running backs, along with serving as the offensive coordinator.  Browning became the first head coach at Edinboro to debut with a win since McDonald in 1969 when the Fighting Scots opened the 2006 season with a 28-14 win at West Chester.  He went on to lead Edinboro to a 6-5 finish, the most wins ever by a first-year coach.  That was followed by a 7-4 finish in 2007.  His next two Fighting Scot editions recorded a school-record tying nine wins.  In 2008 Edinboro ended the year at 9-2 and was ranked 20th in the final AFCA Top 25.  The Fighting Scots had a 9-4 record in 2009, making the NCAA playoffs for the first time in his tenure.  Edinboro would end the year 24th in the AFCA poll.  The Boro posted back-to-back 7-4 finishes in 2010 and 2011.  The 4-6 finish in 2012 represented Browning's first losing season as head coach. 

Denny Douds (Slippery Rock '53) has been the head coach at East Stroudsburg for 41 years and is in his 49th year as a member of the ESU staff. He owns a 245-172-3 career record, ranking third among active coaches, second active Division II coaches, and tied for 22nd in NCAA history in wins. The 420 games coached leads all active NCAA coaches. He has led the Warriors to PSAC Championships in 1975, '78 and '82, plus Eastern Division crowns nine times. Four of his teams have been selected to play in the NCAA playoffs. Douds is one of five coaches in college football history to coach 40+ years and spend his entire career at the same school.

Browning Comments ... on the Fighting Scots
"I thought we'd show more improvement than we did against Shippensburg. We still play young. We made some errors that you just can't make and expect to win."

Browning Comments ... on the Warriors
"I don't think the score against Slippery Rock is indicative of how good East Stroudsburg is. A lot of people picked them to win the PSAC East. They're a good football team. They have a very good quarterback. Schematically they have always been good. They are always well-coached and play hard. It will be a 60-minute deal."