Coming off its first loss of the season, Delaware didn’t have a football game this past Saturday to measure how it had rebounded.
But the Blue Hens did have a week of practice aimed at honing fundamentals and improving certain areas.
Coach Ryan Carty proclaimed that a successful venture Monday, with Delaware’s next test looming Saturday against nonconference foe Morgan State. Kick-off is at 3 p.m. at Delaware Stadium for the Homecoming game.
Nolan Henderson, who injured his knee in the 27-21 setback at William & Mary on Oct. 8, will be starting at quarterback, Carty promised. Henderson had returned to the game after getting hurt trying to retrieve an errant snap and needing assistance from athletic trainers.
“He was hobbled last week at the end of that game but he’ll be OK,” Carty said, adding that Henderson was held out of the first couple practices last week.
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Delaware (5-1 overall, 3-1 Colonial Athletic Association) remains No. 13 in this week’s Stats Perform FCS national Top 25 media poll, which has a new No. 1 after South Dakota State nipped North Dakota State 23-21 Saturday.
Morgan State (2-4) has had six straight losing seasons since making the FCS playoffs in 2014 after winning a five-way MEAC title tie-breaker.
“Coming back from a loss, any game’s going to be important just to get back into momentum and get back on track,” Delaware running back Marcus Yarns said Monday. “So I feel as though this game is pretty big for everybody on the team, just getting their heads back on track.”
A decisive stretch of CAA games follow at Elon, which suffered its first league loss Saturday against Rhode Island, home against Monmouth and Richmond, then at Villanova to close the regular season.
“Sometimes it does take putting your hand on the stove and getting burned to realize that that stove’s hot,” Carty said. “And so we had to make sure we got back to the basics, the fundamentals of practicing really hard. I think we were practicing well but obviously, we could always practice a little bit better and I think we did this week.”
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William & Mary piled up 266 ground yards against Delaware, including Bronson Yoder’s 114 on 20 carries. Twenty-eight of the Tribe’s 57 running plays netted five yards or more yards.
“That didn’t shake us and that didn’t define who we are as a defense and as a team,” said defensive lineman Artis Hemmingway, who added the defensive front felt particularly responsible for the Hens’ tough day. “We just gotta go on to the next and limit the little mistakes and little things that can prevent us from not winning the game.’’
One area Carty would like to see improvement with his offense, for which he calls the plays, is developing better consistency and taking advantage of opportunities.
Delaware ranks 11th among the 13 CAA teams in red-zone offense, scoring on 68.2 percent of its trips inside the 20. Delaware is 15-for-22, with 14 touchdowns and a field goal.
“I don’t think we’ve put together a four-quarter game on offense yet,” Carty said. “I think we’ve had spurts, and that is kind of a product of who we are over the course of time with the amount of shots we take.
“There’s gonna be times where you go three-and-out. But I think we have, with the ability with how good our players are and as they get to know the system even more in-depth, I think we do have the ability to stay a little more consistent than we’ve been.”
As an example, Carty mentioned third-down conversions, in which Delaware ranks seventh in the CAA with a 38.8-percent success rate, and fourth-down conversions, in which the Hens rank 10th at 31.3 percent.
“We’re focusing on that and trying to get better at that,” Carty said.
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