Aplin lifts Arkansas State over FIU

By: Jackson Wolek / Staff Writer 

It  was a tale of two halves for both offenses on Tuesday night with both teams combining to score just 12 points in the first half and 38 in the second. In the end, Arkansas State was able to take down FIU in an important Sun Belt conference battle in front of an intense crowd of over 15,000 in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

ASU was able to turn on their offense in the second half and produced 378 yards of offense by the time the game was over, 240 of them coming on the ground as they beat FIU 34-16.

Quarterback Wesley Carroll went 23 for 37, throwing for 220 yards and scored only one touchdown in the loss.

“I think we had a lot of missed opportunities. Penalties obviously killed us, and we got to get better, and we will. There’s a lot of potential on this team and we’re not reaching our potential,” Carroll said.

With the loss the Panthers (4-3, 1-2 SBC) fall to fifth place in the conference and are now three games behind first-place Louisiana, who is 4-0 in the SBC.

“The most important thing you do is face reality. We’re not where we want to be as a football team,” said head coach Mario Cristobal. “ That’s the reality of it, and we talked about that in the locker room that you face that, you confront that because the only way to address that is to look at it in the eye, work at it, practice it and you become a better football team.”

On the very first play of the game, Carroll found T.Y. Hilton for a 32-yard pass that brought the offense down to the Arkansas State 34-yard line and in great field position. A false start penalty from left tackle Caylin Hauptmann and another penalty for having 12 men on the field forced them into an eventual 36-yard field goal from Jack Griffin that went wide left.

Penalties hurt the Panthers the most throughout the game as they were flagged 10 times for 81 yards.

“They were penalties that were very easily avoidable, and that stuff hurts us. We worked on it for the last 10 days and felt like we got a little bit better,” Cristobal said.

The defense helped get the ball right back when cornerback Junior Mertile intercepted ASU quarterback Ryan Aplin’s pass and returned it 20 yards to the Wolves 42-yard line.This time FIU settled for a 46-yard field goal that went through the uprights to put them up 3-0 with 3:15 to go in the first quarter.

Both defenses held tight for the remainder of the first half and allowed no touchdowns from either side, although FIU entered the red zone three times and Arkansas State once.

A 24-yard field goal from Brian Davis with 8:30 to go was then followed by another Griffin field goal, this time for 33 yards, and a 49-yard field goal from ASU kicker Bobby Zauld as time expired to end the half tied at 6-6.

Arkansas State went directly to Aplin on their first drive of the second half, not to throw but to run the ball, rushing for 48 yards that was eventually capped off by a misdirection play that he took 22 yards into the endzone to quickly make it 13-6 with 10:37 to go in the 3rd quarter.

A 46-yard bomb from Carroll to Hilton tied the game back up at 13-13 on the very next FIU drive and gave Hilton his 22nd receiving touchdown of his career, which is the most for receivers in FIU history and ties the Sun Belt record set by Kerry Wright of Middle Tennessee.

“It meant a lot but we got an ‘L’ so I have to get better,” said Hilton. “Either I got to score more touchdowns or get my team involved by making a block down field and springing the running back. We got to get better.”

The third quarter ended with ASU driving on the FIU 10-yard line after another Griffin field goal that made it 16-13. Aplin found Allen Muse for the touchdown on that same drive to give the Wolves a 20-16 lead.

He scored his second rushing touchdown of the game with 3:28 to go in the game on a 7-yard run that put ASU ahead 27-16 and the Wolves added one more, a 9-yard run from running back Derek Lawson to end their scoring spree.

Aplin completed 14 of 24 passes for 147 yards and one touchdown and carried the ball 23 times for 151 yards and two touchdowns on the FIU defense.

“We knew he was dangerous. We knew he could run well and we didn’t stop him like we’re capable of stopping him and credit to them, he got loose and was certainly one of the big differences in the ball game,” said Cristobal.