{"id":11319,"date":"2018-09-13T14:00:01","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T20:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/?p=11319"},"modified":"2018-09-20T22:23:42","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T04:23:42","slug":"weather-delay-delays-bisons-offense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2018\/09\/13\/weather-delay-delays-bisons-offense\/","title":{"rendered":"Weather delay delays Bisons offense"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Bisons played their first home game of the season Sunday afternoon against Southern Arkansas University<\/a>. The game was scheduled for Saturday night, but had to be moved to Sunday afternoon due to lightning.<\/p>\n

The game was a tale of two halves. The first half was all Harding, the team jumped out to a 14-0 lead in the first quarter. The second half the Muleriders put up 21 unanswered points, including a fumble recovery returned for a touchdown by senior defensive end DaVondrick Lison with just under a minute remaining in the game. Harding would get a quick score but would fail to recover an onside kick and end up losing the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is tough to win a game. There are a lot of ways to lose a game, and we figured out a few ways to lose one today. Tough loss, but we will bounce back,\u201d Bisons head coach Paul Simmons<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

The Bisons defense came out strong, giving up just three first downs in the first half. They gave the offense a short field on their second touchdown drive, thanks to an interception by senior defensive back Dra Smith<\/a>. The defense also closed the door on a Mulerider drive that started in Harding territory with an incredible pick by senior defensive back Frank Herbert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was basically disguising our coverage by showing press, and once the ball was snapped, I bailed into coverage,\u201d Hebert said. \u201cThe ball went up, and I flocked right to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only Southern Arkansas points in the first half came of a 21-yard scoop and score by freshman defensive back Brock Floyd. By all accounts Harding looked to be in complete control of the game at intermission.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt like there were chances in the second half to put them away, but we did not do it,\u201d Simmons said.<\/p>\n

In the second half Southern Arkansas took a while to get going but would score their first offensive touchdown on a long 15 play, 89-yard drive that made it 17-14. After a Harding punt, the Muleriders would capitalize on their next possession, taking it to the end zone again to give them their first lead of the ballgame, 21-17, with just under 8 minutes left on the clock.<\/p>\n

The Bisons had two drives to try and regain the lead, but they were both cut short by mishaps. The first ended with a dropped pass by sophomore running back Romar Reades<\/a>, the other was the scoop and score with under a minute remaining in the game. The air attack did look good, sophomore quarterback Preston Paden<\/a> connected with senior wide receiver Kohl Blickenstaff<\/a> for a 35-yard touchdown to cap off a 16 second drive. The Bisons would fail to convert a two-point conversion, which made the score and the game end 28-23.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be a day when the defense does not play well and the offense has to carry us,\u201d Simmons said. \u201cThe bottom line is this: If you are going to be a championship level team, you have got to have some games that you win where you do not play very well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Bisons played their first home game of the season Sunday afternoon against Southern Arkansas University. The game was scheduled for Saturday night, but had to be moved to Sunday…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15109,"featured_media":11323,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[149,284,148,285,173,283,164,282,281],"class_list":["post-11319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-bisons","tag-dra-smith","tag-football","tag-frank-herbert","tag-harding-university","tag-kohl-blickenstaff","tag-preston-paden","tag-romar-reades","tag-southern-arkansas-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11322,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11319\/revisions\/11322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}