VALDOSTA — The No. 3 Valdosta State Blazers takes its show on the road once again as they travel to Greenwood, South Carolina, to face the Erskine College Flying Fleet Saturday at 4 p.m.
The Blazers (3-0) and the Fleet (1-2) will both be playing in their first Gulf South Conference game of the season. It will also be their first-ever meeting between the two schools, with Erskine being a GSC affiliate member for just the 2024 season.
For Valdosta State head coach Tremaine Jackson, he knows his team is eager to start conference play.
“We always talk about the standings on the Gulf South website,” Jackson said. “It goes overall and then it goes conference. Well now, somebody’s going to have a win and a loss on the conference side. We want to be the team that has a win on the conference side. Always a great way to start off league play, especially in our league.”
Jackson also noted the challenges that come with playing in the GSC, stating that he believes the conference is the toughest in Division II.
“I still say today that our league in the best league in all of Division II top to bottom,” Jackson said. “Some people will argue with me, but they don’t play this schedule like we do. It’s tough when even when a new team comes into the league, they’re tough too. There are no bad teams in our league. I think anybody can be beat by anybody on any given day.”
Though Erskine enters the game on a two-game skid, Jackson downplayed the significance of their record.
“I hope that people don’t look at their record and think they’re not good,” Jackson said. “They are good. They are one of the top defenses in the country. We really got our hands full coming up here into unfamiliar territory against a school we’ve never played against.”
This game will be strength vs. strength on third down. The Blazers lead Division II in third-down conversion percentage at 66.7%, while the Fleet are sixth in third-down defense, holding opponents to a 17.9% success rate.
“We got to make sure we convert on third down,” Jackson said. What they like to do is they like to get you into third-and-medium, third-and-long and then do some different stuff defensively to take advantage of you in some passing situations. We got to be ready for that. We got to keep ourselves out of those situations so that they can’t do that.”
Jackson added that the key to avoiding those situations is to simply put themselves in short-yardage situations, citing his team’s success in converting them.
“We also got to get to a lot of and-one situations — second-and-one, third-and-one — so that we can win those,” Jackson said. “The past three games, we’ve been able to convert a lot of those.”
Offensively, Jackson says the focus will be on establishing a run game early on against a stingy Erskine defense. The Fleet allow just 3.34 yards per carry, good for 14th-best in Division II and tops in the GSC.
“We’re going to have to establish a great run game and have a great plan for what it is that they do on defense so that we can find the advantages to take on in their defense so that we can get our run game going,” Jackson said. “Everybody knows we got a quarterback, and they’re going to try to keep him under wraps, so somebody else has to step up. With what they do defensively, we got to find ways to run the football, and we got to break tackles. They do a good job tackling the football.”