Even though his first season as the Gorillas’ head coach was thrown into flux with the COVID pandemic, Pittsburg State’s Brian Wright couldn’t be more thankful for the opportunity to be coaching his players this Saturday when PSU hosts Nebraska-Kearney at 12:05 p.m. at Carnie Smith Stadium.
“I can’t explain how truly grateful we are because on Saturday, we are going to be one of only five Division II games that will be played,” Wright said. “We’re pretty fortunate to have the administration, to have Jim Johnson, our athletic director, really work hard for us to get us some football games this year.
“We’ve learned from all of this that you have to be thankful and grateful for the opportunities that you get because it might be stripped away from you. We’ve learned to really focus on the process and daily routine of trying to get better, making constant improvement on getting better as a human being, as a student and as a football player.”
Wright’s first offseason as the PSU head coach was halted just two practices in when the MIAA canceled the remaining schedule for spring sports in the middle of March because of the COVID outbreak, which included spring practice for football. In early August, news broke that the NCAA Division II Presidents Council decided to call off the fall sports championships because of the pandemic. About a week and a half later, the MIAA followed suit, suspending conference athletics until Jan. 1.
Suddenly, the Gorillas’ 2020 season was in serious jeopardy of not happening. That was until it was announced by Pittsburg State in September that the Gorilla football team would return to the gridiron for a shortened season. Pittsburg State will play a five-game schedule, with two home games (UNK on Oct. 31 and Western Colorado on Nov. 21) and three road games (at Missouri Western on Nov. 7, Stephen F. Austin on Nov. 14 and West Texas A&M on Nov. 28).
“You have all the practice and you do all the homework, but you don’t really know where you are at until you take the test,” Wright said. “We need to go out there and take the test to see what we know and how we execute when the lights are on, there is another team across the ball and it’s live. Sometimes, guys really thrive when it’s game day, and I am really looking forward to seeing who that is.”
“We are building our program, so any games we get at this time are going to help us build and get better for the future,” Wright continued. “We want to teach our guys how to prepare to win. We need games in order to do that. We need to teach them what a Tuesday practice or a Thursday walkthrough looks like during a game week. They need to learn how to take a game plan and go execute it, and we just need to get guys reps and game experience.”
It was crucial for Pittsburg State to fill out some sort of a schedule for the fall season if possible. Though the option of playing in the spring was there, that never really sat well with Coach Wright for a couple of simple reasons: You are risking players’ health in terms of injuries when playing a spring schedule and then turning around with little recovery time to play again in the fall. It also allows the team to hopefully revert back to a standard routine and schedule.
“I really wanted no part of spring,” Wright said. “I wanted to get anything we possibly could this fall. We want to get back to a normal recruiting calendar and a normal spring ball calendar. And hopefully, get back to normalcy in the fall of 2021. We were trying to build more for that than just playing games in the spring.”
The Gorillas have a new offensive and defensive scheme under Wright and his staff, and not having any significant spring practice time put them behind the eight ball in terms of evaluation.
“We watched them in the weight room, but we didn’t get the actual football side of things,” Wright said. “That was very difficult because typically you would take your spring practice and really dissect it at the end, evaluate it and get a really good grip and handle on where you are at as a football team and as a program. You would get a sense of where we need to recruit, what schemes we may need to change to adapt to what we have. We lost that time, and usually you have that time throughout summer as well.
“We had to get going right in September, start practicing and really kind of go on the fly with what we have. We tried to install at a pretty fast pace and get as much in early on as we could. We have kind of trimmed it from there after six weeks or practice to what our guys are good at.”
As far as the new offensive scheme goes, the Gorillas will be working uptempo out of a spread-based offense predominantly with a single-back look in 3-by-1 or 2-by-2 sets. The goal is to spread opposing defenses out to open up running lanes, then using play action to stretch the field.
Of course, when it comes to the spread offense, the quarterback is always the topic of conversation heading into the season. Sophomore Mak Sexton, who saw action in 11 games last season, freshman Chad Dodson Jr. and junior Matt Harman, who played in 10 games a year ago, are all in the mix.
“All three of them have done a good job for us,” Wright said. “Really Mak and Chad have kind of led that group. We will probably see both of those guys playing for us.”
On defense, Pittsburg State is based in a three-man front, playing multiple formations from there. The goal is to pressure offenses off the edge while remaining stout in stopping the run.
Without a conference crown or postseason championship to play for, it’s obvious what the motivation is for the Gorillas and every other Division II team in action—the opportunity to play the game they love. And for the Pittsburg State senior class of 10 — whose leadership during all of the uncertainty was invaluable — that especially rings true.
“They’ve been instrumental in us getting through this time,” Wright said. “We’ve needed them for sure, there is no doubt about that. I think they’ve gotten the team’s respect because the team understands what they’ve had to go through. Those (seniors) had to make some really tough decisions on whether they were coming back or not. I think the team respects that a lot of these guys have given everything they have even though it’s five games. They are playing because they have the opportunity to play the game they love with no championship or no playoffs. That can be difficult.”
Of course, the cherry on top of getting to finally make his debut with Pittsburg State, Wright opens his career against the Lopers just after noon in front of the home crowd on the sidelines of Brandenburg Field.
“It’s pretty cool to think that our first opportunity here as a new staff is right here at home,” Wright said. “The Gorilla Walk probably won’t be quite the same, but I just think the fact that we get to open up here is pretty special.”
