After the sixth consecutive loss of the season, Kennesaw State coach Brian Bohannon had run out of words. As the Owls kept giving effort but continued to fall short, Bohannon stuck with the same message as the losses mounted. If the team stuck together, something good would happen.
And then Kennesaw State, in its first season as an FBS program after nine seasons at the FCS level, lost to Middle Tennessee 14-5. The Owls scored a field goal and a safety. Whatever the reward that their coach promised was, it would have to wait again.
“After the last game, I went into the locker room and, I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t have words for them because I kept saying the same thing every week,” Bohannon told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a Thursday phone interview. “They were tired of hearing it, I was tired of saying it. But it was what it was. It’s been tough. And that’s what made this one as big as it was, is because of all the things leading up to it.”
“It” was as sweet and treasured a win as Bohannon has ever had in his coaching career, a 27-24 upset of previously undefeated Liberty at the Owls’ Fifth Third Stadium on Wednesday night. Against a team with vastly greater resources that had run up a 5-0 record and was trying to position itself for one of the 12 College Football Playoff spots, Kennesaw State earned not only its first win of the season, but its first-ever win over an FBS opponent.
A team that gained notice on the fringes of the state’s college football scene for its outsize success at the FCS level, Kennesaw State got a taste of the limelight it has sought in moving up to FBS this year.
For one midweek night, the Owls were the toast of college football, joining the likes of Vanderbilt and Northern Illinois as perpetrators of this season’s major upsets. Liberty took the field as 25.5-point favorites before being humbled.
Bohannon and his team celebrated something far more intrinsic than a wild result – a triumph of perseverance, teamwork and belief. As the weariness in Bohannon’s voice made clear, this season has not been easy.
At one team meeting during the slide, he asked how many of the players were frustrated. Bohannon said it was as if he had asked them to punch a hole in the ceiling. All the hands shot straight up, even those of the coaches in the back of the room.
“You’re just praying something good happens,” he said. “You just don’t really know how long you can keep ‘em engaged. That’s the reality of it. To their credit, they stayed in. Listen, man, they could have quit weeks ago, and they didn’t.
“It’s as challenging, in my coaching career, as anything I’ve ever been through,” he said. “Ain’t no two ways about that.”
Before Wednesday, you could make a very easy case that Kennesaw State was the weakest team in FBS. Given that it was the Owls’ first season at that level, it would be reasonable. Beyond the Owls’ 0-6 record, the Owls were last of 134 FBS teams in total offense and scoring offense, 107th overall in total defense and 115th in scoring defense and tied for 118th in turnover margin.
And this was not a case of the Owls continually losing nail-biters. They lost their first five games by 11 points or more and the sixth by nine. In the six games, Kennesaw State had held the lead for a total of a little less than 30 minutes of game time, never in the second half.
Bohannon and his staff saw more than that.
“I told ‘em all, I said, ‘Listen, I believe in what we’re doing because we can see some of the good in there,’” Bohannon said. “We just couldn’t replicate any of that stuff for any period of time. So you saw some really good things. It’s like, ‘Can we just put it all together?’”
To pull that play out of his team, Bohannon was willing to try just about anything. Bohannon and his staff rethought how the team practiced and how messages were communicated.
“When you get in one of those (slides), you’ll do anything,” Bohannon said. “I told the coaches, ‘Y’all got an idea, throw it out there. If it sounds like it’s worth a shot, we’ll go try it.’ Anything to create a spark to ignite our kids.”
Coaches were careful in how they corrected and critiqued, and they leaned positive. In the week leading to the Liberty game, Bohannon tried the near unthinkable. He gave up a day of practice in favor of a walk-through session to give players additional recuperation time.
“For an old-school guy like me, that’s a big moment,” he said.
On Wednesday night, it locked into place. The Owls played well in each phase of the game. They held Liberty, ranked 27th in FBS in total offense, well under its season average, stopping the Flames twice on downs, intercepting them once and collecting two three-and-outs.
The Owls’ 134 rushing yards were the second most this season. After getting benched for the previous game, quarterback Davis Bryson returned to the starting lineup and completed 16 of 20 passes for 189 yards, with a touchdown and no interceptions. He entered the game having completed 51.4% of his passes, with an interception every 18.5 attempts.
“(On Wednesday), he looked like Lamar Jackson out there,” Liberty coach Jamey Chadwell told media members after the game.
After a Liberty incompletion apparently ended the game, KSU students rushed the field only for the officiating crew to restore one second to the clock. The Flames’ desperation play failed, and the students returned to the field, like the tide.
Said Chadwell, “They wanted the game more. They played more together as a team, and it showed up.”
There is far more to accomplish for the Owls, who played their first FCS game in 2015 and went 48-15 in their first five seasons (all with Bohannon, the program’s only coach). Bohannon and athletic director Milton Overton have espoused their vision of KSU someday winning the CFP bid available to the champion of a non-power-conference league. The Owls play again Wednesday at Western Kentucky.
“We’ve just got a lot to do and a lot of catching up to do,” Bohannon said. “It’s all been challenging.”
But they can now resume that process with a most satisfying win in their pockets and a new message that Bohannon can give to his players.
