Weber State at JMU: Three Matchups To Watch

HARRISONBURG — For just the third time in James Madison program history, the Dukes will face a team from the Big Sky Conference when Weber State visits Harrisonburg for Friday’s FCS quarterfinal.

The Wildcats were a co-champion of Big Sky in the regular season, but knocked off fellow league co-title winner and eighth-seeded Southern Utah in the second round of the postseason.

Here are three critical matchups within the contest between top-seeded JMU and Weber State that could help determine the outcome:

Fourth-year Weber State coach Jay Hill likes to use more than one tight end at a time.

“We love them because I think they’re mismatches in the run game and throw game,” Hill said. “If you can get the right guys in here, and a lot of teams don’t recruit them anymore, so you can find them out there and that’s one reason we like to use them.

“We love our two. We think they’re as good of a tight end tandem as there is in FCS football for sure.”

Weber State senior Andrew Vollert, at 6-foot-5, 245 pounds, has a team-best 56 catches for 726 yards and five touchdowns. Vollert was an All-American last season and was a unanimous first-team All-Big Sky selection this year. Fellow senior Tui Satuala has caught a touchdown as well.

“They flex [Vollert] out wide and move him all over the place, side to side,” second-year JMU coach Mike Houston said. “We’ve seen stuff like this in the past in our league, but certainly they do a great job of moving him around to get him the football and he’s a big part of their offense.”

Houston said the biggest challenge with matching multiple tight end sets is getting the defense lined up properly.

“Fortunately we have two senior safeties,” Houston said. “If I were sitting here with two freshman safeties, I would have grey hair right now because all we would have worked on would have been formations and shifts.

“With two senior safeties, they’ve seen about everything.”

Both JMU safeties Raven Greene and Jordan Brown have matched up against double tight end formations before.

“I feel like it starts with trying to play good technique from the back end,” Greene said. “If we can do that, I think we’ll have good success.”

Both coaching staffs trust their respective senior quarterback.

Weber State quarterback Stefan Cantwell and James Madison quarterback Bryan Schor have numbers that mirror each other’s and the style both play with adds to the familiar identity of the Dukes and Wildcats.

“They’re very similar players,” Hill said. “Very similar.”

Cantwell has thrown for 23 touchdowns and rushed for seven scores. Schor has thrown for 23 touchdowns and rushed for six scores.

“Stefan can hurt you with both his arm and his feet, so in a way, it’s a lot like the quarterback for JMU,” Hill said. “Same kind of guy. Great leader. Can hurt you with his legs or his arm and doesn’t make a lot of mistakes.”

Cantwell has thrown six interceptions. Schor has thrown 11 interceptions.

JMU senior wide receiver Terrence Alls is coming off his most productive game of the year having hauled in 10 catches for 94 yards and a score in the Dukes’ second-round win over Stony Brook.

This week, Weber State is likely to send its top cornerback and the Big Sky Defensive Player of the Year, Taron Johnson, at Alls.

The two might not be lined up against each other on every play, but when they’re forced to play one on one against each other, it’s something to pay attention to, especially if JMU struggles to run the ball like it did last week.

“We’ll have to go beat our man to find separation,” JMU offensive coordinator Donnie Kirkpatrick said. “We’ll probably have to throw it deep a bit. We’d still like to run it and throw it off the run, but we may just have to throw it a little to set the run up off of it.”

Alls could be Schor’s primary target again.

Johnson has three interceptions and eight pass breakups this season.

“He’s already been invited to the Senior Bowl so that mean he’s going to be a draft pick,” Kirkpatrick said of Johnson. “The good thing is that we don’t just have one receiver.

“Terrence had a big game last week and I thought [junior] David Eldridge had a really good game as well. We still got other guys. [Sophomore] Riley [Stapleton] had a couple of key catches early. They can’t just have one guy to take away our one guy. I think we’ll be OK.”