Defense may decide Army’s AAC championship clash with Tulane

The American Athletic Conference championship game features two of the best offenses in the nation. But both head coaches say the game, pitting No. 24 Army, the conference’s regular-season league champion, and Tulane at what promises to be a cold Michie Stadium tonight, beginning at 8 p.m., may very well be decided by which team has the best defense. 

Army (10-1 overall and 8-0 in the AAC) is scoring nearly 33 points per game and features the nation’s leading rushing offense, producing 312 yards per contest. The Black Knights are led by senior quarterback Bryson Daily, who has 1,348 rushing yards and a school and conference-record 25 rushing touchdowns thus far this season. He has also thrown for eight touchdowns and has just one interception. 

Tulane (9-2 overall and 7-1 in the AAC) is averaging about 40 points per game and features quarterback Darian Mensah, who has collected 2,514 passing yards and 20 touchdown passes, and running back Makhi Hughes, who has 1,306 rushing yards and 15 touchdowns. 

The Green Wave also have a strong array of receivers, including Mario Williams, Dontae Fleming and Yulkeith Brown, each who have more than 400 receiving yards this season. Tulane lost two games to Power Four schools early in the season, dropping a 34-27 decision to No. 17 Kansas State and, the following week, losing to No. 15 Oklahoma, 34-19. The Green Wave lost to No. 25 Memphis, 34-24, on Thanksgiving night, which gave Army sole possession of first place and home field advantage in the championship game. 

But despite all this offensive firepower both coaches spent a lot of time talking about their opponent’s defensive units and how they need to compete against them at a AAC press conference at West Point on Thursday. Army has given up an average of only about 15 points per game, while Tulane is giving up 18.4 points this season.

“They start off with their defense,” said Army coach Jeff Monken. “Coach (Greg) Gasparato, who’s their defensive coordinator, does a tremendous job. He was here on our staff. He’s got a long history with (Army defensive coordinator) Coach (Nate) Woody and defending option offenses. He’s coached at schools where he was a defensive coach and the and the offense that was being run in those programs was an option offense. He’s got a great plan, he’s got really talented players, and they’re playing really well—playing together, playing hard.”

Monken added that Green Wave head coach Joe Sumrall, in his first year with Tulane, is a defensive-minded coach and his teams have always played good defense. “They are a challenge to play, in terms of our offense against their defense because of their ability to get their guys to play our schemes with great detail, fundamentals and assignment,” Sumrall said.

Tulane’s focus will be to stop Daily and force the Black Knights out of their normal game plan that has worked so well this season.

“With this Army team, what they do running the football is very impressive,” Sumrall said. “It starts with their quarterback. He’s a load, man. He’s like a linebacker. His body type, he’s a big strong guy. I’ve got a lot of respect for him. We’ve got to tackle well. We’ve got to gang tackle and we’ve got to wrap up and we’ve got to leverage the football properly.

Sumrall is not particularly concerned about the game time conditions, with temperatures expected to drop into the low to mid 20s during the contest. Still, he said he made sure his team knows what they will be facing in the game, which will be televised by ABC. 

“We did our offseason training back in January and February, and I’ve got some clips of when we’re doing our workout at 25 degrees in t-shirts,” he said. “It should not have an effect in our guys’ readiness to play.”

Monken, on the other hand, was looking to create the right practice schedule for his team, after the Black Knights beat UTSA, 29-24, last Saturday, to clinch the regular season title. 

“We’ve practiced maybe as lightly as we’ve practiced all year, frankly,” he said. “It’s a six-day turnaround to the game and we were conscious of that, so we hit far less this week than we have. We modified the equipment that we wore in the middle of the week, just so that our guys would be fresh, and hope that we could get as many guys to the game tomorrow night and kick off feeling as well as they possibly can.”