Defending FCS national champion and top-ranked Sam Houston gets its toughest test of the young season at Central Arkansas on Saturday.
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The game (5 p.m. ET start time) won’t be on TV anywhere, but if you don’t have either of those channels, anyone in the US can watch Sam Houston vs Central Arkansas live on ESPN+:
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Sam Houston vs Central Arkansas Preview
Central Arkansas will celebrate its last national championship team, a 1991 NAIA squad, while hosting the defending FCS champs in Sam Houston.
This year’s Bears (1-2) will look to get a big Division I FCS program win, facing the defending national champion for the second year in a row. The Bears came up short against North Dakota State in 2020 in Trey Lance‘s “showcase” game for leaving early for the NFL draft and joining the San Francisco 49ers.
“Our task obviously does not get any easier here in late September,” Bears head coach Nathan Brown said via UCASports.com. “This is a game we have circled every year we get a chance to play Sam Houston. To me, they are one of the best programs, if not the best program playing right now at the Division I FCS level. And really in the last 15 years you can probably put them in the same sentence as North Dakota State and James Madison, and then probably Sam Houston.”
Bearkats quarterback Eric Schmid may not have a Lance-like ceiling, but he has plenty of moxie for a Sam Houston team (2-0) that hasn’t lost a game since before COVID-19. Schmid, who led the Bearkats to an unbeaten spring season, has 511 yards passing and six touchdowns with a 56.9% completion percentage this fall.
Central Arkansas quarterback Breylin Smith has been a gun-slinger of late with 957 yards and nine touchdowns passes with a 64.8% completion rate. He averages 319 yards per game, but he also averages two interceptions per game.
That’s good news for Bearkats defensive backs Tristin McCollum and Isaiah Downes, who led the team with two interceptions apiece last season per GoBearkats.com. Both are looking for their first picks of the season. Trevor Williams, Jaylen Thomas, Ysidro Mascorro have the lone picks for the Bearkats this fall.
Bearkats head coach K.C. Keeler expects a tough game against their former Southland Conference foe. He added the 0-2 record start means little, especially the loss to FBS Arkansas State.
“They played an FBS (team), who is a very football program, and then they played a hot FCS team on the road,” Keeler said via The Log Cabin Democrat. “That 0-2 start was a little misleading, but sometimes when you’re backed into a corner, you’re forced to play your best football.”
Central Arkansas beat Arkansas-Pine Bluff 45-23 last week in rebounding from two losses. The Bearkats steamrolled Northern Arizona and Southeast Missouri State in its first two outings by a combined score of 94-30.