By Jared McMurry<\/p>\n
Last Saturday, the Gardner-Webb football team had an opportunity to achieve something special both for their school and the Big South Conference and nearly pulled it off.<\/p>\n
After taking a 16-13 lead over Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) foe South Alabama, offensive miscues and poor tackling kept the Runnin\u2019 Bulldogs from upsetting the Jaguars.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took away a lot of plusses from the game, and our players had a very positive attitude when they came in Sunday afternoon,\u201d said Coach Carroll McCray.<\/p>\n
McCray also noted that he could see a look in his players\u2019 eyes that they will have some exciting opportunities if they make some corrections. \u201cOur film is invaluable, and it was important for our guys to see themselves right away to discover what they\u2019re doing wrong and how to fix it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tyrell Maxwell<\/a> stood out offensively for Gardner-Webb, rushing the ball for over 100 yards on 22 carries. McCray would like to see his quarterback\u2019s running workload decrease heading into the game against Elon and see his backfield contribute on a higher level. \u201cWe need to get our skill guys out on the edge more,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n McCray also mentioned that for the second straight week, the running back core would be filled by committee. \u201cWe have a few guys we need to continue to look at including Elijah Perry<\/a> who is a good speed back,\u201d he said. Bobby Clark<\/a> ran the ball 13 times for 47 yards, while Khalil Lewis<\/a> had seven carries against Elon.<\/p>\n Looking ahead to Elon, Coach McCray expects them to be a very similar team to the Runnin\u2019 Bulldogs. He said that they are very strong up front defensively and are young and inexperienced offensively, much like Gardner-Webb.<\/p>\n According to Coach McCray, his staff and the entire team love playing at home and are excited about the home opener this Saturday. Gardner-Webb hosts Elon at 6 pm at Spangler Stadium in Boiling Springs, and the game can also be streamed on the Big South Sports Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Jared McMurry Last Saturday, the Gardner-Webb football team had an opportunity to achieve something special both for their school and the Big South Conference and nearly pulled it off.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1293,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[60,90,69,91,89,61],"class_list":["post-1292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","category-sports","tag-carroll-mccray","tag-elon","tag-football","tag-home-opener","tag-jared-mcmurry","tag-runnin-bulldogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gwu-today.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}