For those on the outside, the Navy football team should expect an easy game Saturday when it hosts Division I-AA Massachusetts at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
But Navy knows better than to take the Minutemen lightly. They play in the highly competitive Atlantic-10 Conference, are among the top 10 I-AA teams in the country and come to Annapolis a week after a number of their peers upset I-A opponents.
Navy can also learn from its previous experiences, like when Delaware, another A-10 school, upset the Midshipmen, 21-17, in 2003. Navy finished 8-5 that year and lost to Texas Tech in the EV1.net Houston Bowl.
“Anybody can beat us,” Navy coach Paul Johnson said. “Go back and look at the record book here. It?s not like we?ve had a program that?s won every game for 30 years. We have to be ready to play no matter who we play.”
One area Johnson knows his team needs to improve in is the passing game, where the Midshipmen were just 2 of 6 for six yards in Saturday?s 28-23 win over East Carolina. Johnson added that while he was impressed with how quarterback Brian Hampton managed the team and made plays when he had to Saturday, he knows he could be even better.
“He has to focus and dial in,” Johnson said. “Just relax and play. He needs to trust his ability and play. A lot of the things he missed he said he saw when we went over the film. I think he realized it wasn?t that he didn?t know the stuff. It was just first-game jitters, or for whatever reason, he didn?t go the right away or didn?t do what he was supposed to do sometimes. All that stuff is correctable.”
Hampton, who was a freshman during the Delaware loss, knows he can?t afford to take UMass lightly or history may repeat itself.
“Some teams look past I-AA teams and I don?t know why,” Hampton said. “I definitely don?t want that to happen. Our goal is not to overlook anybody.”
Navy notes
» Navy coach Paul Johnson and UMass coach Don Brown are no strangers to each other. Johnson was the coach at Georgia Southern when the school lost to UMass in the 1998 I-AA title game. Brown was the defensive coordinator for the Minutemen at the time
» Navy is 3-1 against I-AA schools during the Johnson era. The Midshipmen beat Delaware and Northeastern in 2004 whilewinning against VMI and losing to Delaware in 2003.
