Bears step up schedule

Central Arkansas Coach Clint Conque and the Bears are facing a schedule upgrade, starting with tonight’s opener against Ole Miss.
Central Arkansas Coach Clint Conque and the Bears are facing a schedule upgrade, starting with tonight’s opener against Ole Miss.

— For Central Arkansas Coach Clint Conque, the Bears’ season opener at SEC member Mississippi tonight is a benchmark game for his program.

In the six seasons since UCA moved from NCAA Division II to Division I, it has played five Football Bowl Subdivision schools - Arkansas State, Hawaii, Louisiana Tech, Tulsa and Western Kentucky.

But Ole Miss is the first major conference opponent the Bears have played.

And the Rebels are a far cry from playing schools such as Elizabeth City State in the season opener, as the Bears did in 2010, winning 47-20.

“[It’s] a conference we have a tremendous amount of respect for,” Conque said. “They’ve won the last six crystal football trophies [as national champions]. It’s the next logical step as we moved to Division I some six, seven years ago.”

Ole Miss is the only BCS opponent on the Bears’ schedule this season. But future nonconference games include road trips to Colorado of the Pacific-12 in 2013 and Big 12 members Texas Tech in 2014 and Oklahoma State in 2015.

The Rebels, who finished 2-10, 0-8 in the SEC, last season under former Arkansas coach Houston Nutt, are led by first-year Coach Hugh Freeze. Freeze led Arkansas State to a Sun Belt Conference championship last season and beat UCA 53-24 last September in Jonesboro.

First-year UCA safeties coach Dave Wheeler was on Ole Miss’ staff in 2010-2011 and has given Conque some insight on the Rebels players that are back this year.

Conque said his team has tried to prepare for Ole Miss by looking at last year’s ASU film, a game in which the Bears allowed 646 yards of total offense.

“It’s been a little bit challenging,” Conque said. “We have great respect for Coach Freeze and his staff. We’ve looked at those particular schemes.

“But we know there will probably be a different wrinkle or two.”

Freeze announced this week that junior college transfer Bo Wallace will start at quarterback after beating out junior Barry Brunetti, who transferred to Ole Miss from West Virginia last year.

Wallace spent one year at ASU before transferring to East Mississippi Community College, where he threw for 4,604 yards and 53 touchdowns last season.

No matter what happens tonight, Conque cautions that it is only one game. The Bears’ September schedule includes a road game at Murray State next Saturday and Southland Conference games against defending league champion Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin - the two teams ahead of UCA in the conference’s preseason polls.

“Certainly, we’re preparing for a season. The important thing right now is the first game,” Conque said. “It wouldn’t matter who we were playing, whether it was Hardin-Simmons or Ole Miss. It just happens to be Ole Miss this year. Hopefully we’ll play well and put ourselves in a position to compete and have a chance to win.”

UCA will start junior Wynrick Smothers at quarterback, his second career start. His first start came against Freeze’s Red Wolves when he filled in for Nathan Dick, who suffered a concussion the week before at Sam Houston State.

The Bears return 15 starters from last season’s 9-4 team that advanced to the second round of the Football Championship Subdivision playoffs. But Conque said he is confident in his team’s chances of being in the hunt again in the Southland.

“When it comes together for us, if we can stay healthy, we have a chance to be a pretty good team,” Conque said. “Some days, I think we’ll be pretty good and some days, you scratch your head and you’re not so sure. But we’re going to find out a lot about our team on Saturday.”

Central Arkansas at Mississippi

WHEN 6 p.m. Central today WHERE Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Oxford, Miss.

RECORDS Central Arkansas 0-0 (9-4 2011); Mississippi 0-0 (2-10 2011) COACHES UCA: Clint Conque (89-51 in 13 seasons); Mississippi: Hugh Freeze (30-7 in four seasons) TV Pay-per-view (DirecTV, Dish, UVerse) RADIO KHLR-FM, 106.7, in Benton/ Little Rock; KUCA-FM, 91.3, in Conway INTERNET ucasports.com

Sports, Pages 21 on 09/01/2012

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