FAU Football Returns Home Saturday vs. North Texas

Harry · September 28, 2012

“Here’s what I see after four weeks: I think special teams-wise, we’ve at least competed or won every game, minus the first game,” he said. “Our coverage teams have been tremendous; our return teams have been at least comparable to what the opponents have been giving us. The punt game has really flipped the field a number of times and our kickoff team has done a great job giving up nothing, so that’s a definite improvement over a year ago.”

Two other areas that Pelini is excited about is penalties and turnovers, at least the lack thereof by the team.

“We were a highly penalized team a year ago,” said the coach “We’ve got to be, statistically-speaking, a highly-rated team in terms of number of penalties, and we’re operating efficiently (there). Turnovers were a big deal to us going into the season. We had those miscues early, but we’ve gotten better every game in terms of just taking care of the ball and ball security. I’m looking at marked improvements in certain areas.”

There are three areas Pelini pointed to that still do need improvement.

“I want to see us get out of the gates faster and I want us to be a better tackling football team, and I want to be able to run the ball more consistently,” he said. “Those are the things I want to see more improvement on. But I’m seeing improvement in areas, and I keep saying that’s what this year is about, laying foundations for playing our kind of football. I knew that this was going to be a long haul, it wasn’t just going to be a quick fix. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

North Texas will come to Boca Raton with the exact same record of 1-3 overall and an 0-1 mark in the Sun Belt. And their season schedule to date looks very similar to that of the Owls: They lost to two top-ranked opponents (No. 3 LSU and No. 8 Kansas State), won over a smaller school at home (34-7 over Texas Southern), and lost their conference opener (14-7 last week to Troy).

Kickoff on Saturday is at 5 p.m., and the game can be heard on fausports.com or seen on ESPN3.com. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster or calling the FAU Ticket Office at 1-866-FAU-OWLS.

Read more: http://www.fausports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/092512aaa.html