ORLANDO, Fla. — Arkansas State has been to Epcot, has seen the Orlando Magic play and later Thursday planned a trip to the Harry Potter-themed part of Universal.
"Orlando has been a blast," senior defensive end Chris Odom said Thursday, during a Cure Bowl news conference on Thursday afternoon.
But the sightseeing is nearing its end for the Red Wolves, who later Thursday night will turn more serious and dig in completely for Saturday's Cure Bowl against Central Florida.
“At the end of the day, we want to be ready come Saturday,” Coach Blake Anderson. “I think it’s a tremendous challenge, but it’s also an incredible opportunity. We want to be ready, we want to be at our best.”
Anderson and players joined Central Florida Coach Scott Frost and players at the Cure Bowl news conference Thursday, previewing the 4:30 p.m. game Saturday at Camping World Stadium. The Red Wolves (7-5) are playing in their sixth consecutive bowl game, while the Knights (6-6) are back in the postseason after last year’s 0-12 finish.
The winless season led to the retirement of Coach George O’Leary, who led the Knights to the Fiesta Bowl in 2013, and the hiring of Scott Frost, who had been the offensive coordinator at Oregon.
“Nobody wanted to remember it,” linebacker Mark Rucker said of last season. “Coach Frost emphasized just playing hard for each other. He brought back the fun of the game. Last year, it wasn’t much fun to play.”
The Knights' reward for a rebounding season was a bowl game across town from their campus. Camping World Stadium isn’t their home field, but it’s less than 20 miles west of Bright House Networks Stadium. Frost said they had a 10-minute bus ride to their hotel and a two-minute ride Thursday morning for practice.
Anderson, whose team flew from Memphis to Orlando on Tuesday night, said it won’t make much of a difference.
“They’ve got to drive across town. That’ll make it hard on them,” he quipped. “That’ll even up the playing field.”
ASU has practiced twice at a local high school and will practice Friday morning at Camping World Stadium. The Red Wolves will go into game mode after Thursday’s dinner.
“We’ll try to build it back onto a normal as a schedule as we can into kickoff on Saturday,” he said.
A victory would give ASU an 8-5 record, its sixth consecutive season with that many victories. It would also be its first bowl victory since the 2013 season after losing to Louisiana Tech in last year’s New Orleans Bowl and to Toledo in the GoDaddy Bowl the year before.
“I think it would say a lot about this group of guys that they finished well and they finished well against really good opponent,” Anderson said. “There are so many things that go into a game that the season is not defined by one game. But it would be good to send these seniors out with a win against a quality football team.”
Read Friday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.