North Texas Daily

Akshay Mirchandani / Sports Editor

The Mean Green football team will return to the field on Saturday to take on the Indiana University Hoosiers on the road.  The game is set to kickoff at 1:30 p.m. and will be broadcasted on the Big Ten network.

“Excellent open week, I thought we got a lot done,” head coach Dan McCarney said. “You want to have a combination of rest, rehab and yet we have so much room to improve as a football team obviously and you want to keep that going.”

North Texas was off last week after its 77-3 win over Nicholls State University Sept. 20 at home. That was redshirt freshman quarterback Dajon Williams’ first start for the Mean Green, and he succeeded throwing three touchdown passes and rushing for two more.

Even though his first start was against a Division I-AA school at home, Williams said he is not nervous about replicating his success against a tougher team on the road.

“I feel no pressure,” Williams said. “I mean, we’ve been in this situation before and I traveled a lot with the team, so there’s really no pressure at all.”

Like the Mean Green, Indiana comes into this game at 2-2. However, one of their wins came against the University of Missouri Tigers on Sept. 20 on the road. At the time, Missouri was ranked as the No. 18 team in the country.

“Indiana is a heck of a football team,” McCarney said. “You go to Missouri, as I’ve been many times, and you beat a nationally ranked Missouri team at their place, they’re a heck of a football team.”

Junior defensive back Kenny Buyers said what makes Indiana so tough is the talent they have on all areas of the field.

“They’re big, they have some really good running backs and they have a good group of receivers,” Buyers said. “They’ve averaged like 90 plays a game so we’re working on a fast pace this week, and it’s going to be a lot of snaps.”

One player that McCarney said the Mean Green need to key in on is Indiana junior running back Tevin Coleman. Coleman is the fourth in the country in rushing yards with 691 yards and seven touchdowns so far this season.

“He can make people miss, he can run over people. When you watch the four games that we watched you can see him do that,” McCarney said. “He plays like almost with a running back possessed. He has this attitude carrying the football that ‘you’re not going to stop me.’”

Despite this not being a conference game, McCarney said it is still important that the team ends nonconference on a high note.

“This has nothing to do with the Big Ten race. It has nothing to do with the Conference USA race. It has a lot to do with what happens at the end of the season,” McCarney said.