Portland State coach Bruce Barnum spent the week embracing his team’s 28 1/2-point underdog role at Arkansas.
That included some jokes about about how Arkansas’ third-stringers were going to play a lot and some cinematic moments to rally his team.
But he really believed his team had a shot to win.
“Honestly, my coaches and my football team think they can beat anybody,” Barnum said. “Are we the underdog? Yeah. I am not naive, but I am going to throw in the towel and that is how they think. I am goofy with all that.
“We showed them everything from 'Caddyshack' to 'Miracle on Ice.' Games like this, things happen if you believe. It sounds like a fairytale, but it’s not. I told them at halftime that we are right where we needed to be.”
Arkansas led just 10-6 at halftime and won 20-13 in both teams’ season opener.
The Razorbacks dominated the total yardage output 395-230, but only scored two touchdowns in six trips into the red zone.
The Vikings' only touchdown came on a fourth-and-13 heave from backup quarterback Jalani Eason to Charlie Taumoepeau that covered 32 yards with 4:14 left.
“Defensively, though, I am proud of my defense,” Barnum said. “The yards were there, but the points aren’t. They got whatever 400 yards if you look at stats, but we buckled up in the red zone and made them kick. You don’t win games kicking field goals. You saw us, we were kicking field goals. That made us nervous. You don’t win kicking field goals.
“I am proud of my team, but I’m pissed. We are not going to accept losing and I am impressed with their defense.”
Arkansas defense had six sacks, eight tackles for lost yardage, six pass breakups, six quarterback hurries and three interceptions.
“Their defense whupped us,” Barnum said. “We came in and I had a plan and their team did a hell of a job on defense. We wanted to come in with option routes and get our guys off the ball and my fear was we couldn’t protect with their front seven.
“They did a hell of a job. They set on our routes and up front they got to us. We don’t see defenses like that. That was my fear. I tried to adjust to it with some things and it didn’t work. That was frustrating offensively for the first half…because I didn’t put them in the spot to be successful. We kept trying different things and they tried more zone than I thought we would early so we had to make some adjustments at halftime to get the ball going.”
Portland State had one sack, five tackles for lost yardage, an interception, four pass breakups and three quarterback hurries while putting pressure on new Arkansas quarterbacks Ben Hicks and Nick Starkel.
“They have a new quarterback,” Barnum said of starter Hicks. “We thought their strength was the run game so we made sure we had run blitzes and we tried to get after them with the pass and make sure we had the boot going.
“When you have a new guy like that, you try to dink and dunk little bit and you try to play action or boot, so we had some plans for that. They dropped a couple. I’m not saying we covered them, we lucked out when they dropped a couple of them that kept us behind the sticks and they got after us with their pressure defense. It is a fun defense if you can cover, our defense that is, they did all right today.”
Portland State starting quarterback Davis Alexander (10-of-21 for 81 yards with two interceptions) was hurt in the third quarter on one of his many scrambles. He gained 56 yards but lost 29 on sacks.
“Warrior,” Barnum said of Alexander. “He’s a competitor. He was running for his life all day. I didn’t give him a chance. Then I max protected and we’d get turnovers. It was muddy. We were muddy offensively, but it was because of them. Because for (the Football Championship Subdivision), we not bad offensively, we are pretty good offensively. But that SEC defense had its way with us.”
Barnum said Alexander could have returned to the game, but he chose not to let him.
“It is his other shoulder, his non-throwing shoulder,” Barnum said. “He could have come back in, but I said no because I had confidence in Jalani and he’s a different bird for those guys. With him, I am going to go five wide and I am going to smoke and see what you are doing defensively, and we will have an answer for it if we can execute.
“He’s different and that’s why I decided to go with him and because we had not scored a touchdown until Davis went down.”
Perhaps the best throw all day was Barnum tossing his hat about 15 yards down the sideline while he was trying to get a timeout.
“I needed some timeouts and I wasn’t either fast enough or my guy (referee), I was in his wrong ear,” Barnum said. “I figure I lost about 14 1/2 seconds on timeouts today. Would that have mattered? S***, I don’t know.
“My guys, the Big Sky guys (writers), say that I can chunk my hat just to get their attention. Then I thought about it, this is the SEC so I don’t know if I am supposed to do that s***.”
Barnum didn’t want credit for keeping the score close.
“Don’t be satisfied,” Barnum said. “They played well. Everybody is going to say that you hung with Arkansas. No, we didn’t. The score says we did, but you look at that game and their defense and they have got some dudes. They have got some cats on defense.
“That’s frustrating. Physically, I thought they were much better than us on defense. We mixed it up. You can confuse an offense like that early in the season. With this system, you are able to do that with the different blitzes and zone and man and hiding and making it all look the same.”