{"id":4125,"date":"2010-10-29T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-02-22T15:21:56","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"bisons-defeat-no-9-ranked-delta-state-35-31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2010\/10\/29\/bisons-defeat-no-9-ranked-delta-state-35-31\/","title":{"rendered":"Bisons defeat No. 9-ranked Delta State, 35-31"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Carly Kester<\/p>\n<p>The Bison football team won its first victory against Delta State Saturday, Oct. 15. This was the first time in Bison football history that the team had beaten the No. 9-ranked Delta State.The game was played at Delta State&#8217;s home field during their homecoming game. The Bisons led the first half with a score of 31-13. After halftime, Delta State made a comeback and was up 35-31 for most of the second half.The Bisons managed to bounce back with a winning touchdown pass thrown by senior quarterback Josh Powell and caught by senior wide receiver Jordan Watson. The final score was 38-35.Head football coach Ronnie Huckeba said that the new offensive strategy was partly the reason for the team&#8217;s success.&#8221;We&#8217;ve primarily been a throwing team in the past few years, but we&#8217;ve changed our offensive strategy to where we&#8217;re running the ball more and controlling the clock,&#8221; Huckeba said.Huckeba said this game was significant because Delta State was the first team the Bisons played against when Harding re-instated football back in 1959, and since then, the Bisons have not been able to beat Delta State.&#8221;They just beat our brains out that first year,&#8221; Huckeba said. &#8220;We were just getting our program started and they were an established program, so it was just a lot of frustration there because of how bad that loss was. And since we have been playing Delta State our record against them is 0-12-1; we&#8217;ve never beaten them.&#8221;Watson said this victory meant a lot to the team because there have been many close games this season.&#8221;All of our games this year have been pretty close,&#8221; Watson said. &#8220;We&#8217;ve lost three really close games and a touchdown, and with this game being so close and finally pulling one out in the end was really significant for us.&#8221;Watson also said scoring the winning touchdown against Delta State was important for him because he missed the chance to score at the game against West Alabama.&#8221;It meant a lot to me because at West Alabama I had the chance to catch the winning ball and it ended up getting back out of my hands, so it was a tough week getting over that,&#8221; Watson said. &#8220;Then coming down to the [end of the game], I had a feeling [Powell] was going to give me a second chance.&#8221;&#8221;They&#8217;re a good team and they&#8217;re playing well with the best teams in our conference,&#8221; Huckeba said. &#8220;That&#8217;s exciting but it&#8217;s also very stressful, especially for the coach on the sidelines.&#8221;The next Bison football game will be against University or Arkansas-Monticello on Oct. 30 at First Security Stadium.<\/p>\n<div align=\"left\" class=\"ddrfssbm\"><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Written by Carly Kester The Bison football team won its first victory against Delta State Saturday, Oct. 15. This was the first time in Bison football history that the team&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":376,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[268],"class_list":["post-4125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-hurricane-florence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4125","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\/376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}