By: Cat Martin, Contributing Writer
On Jan. 6, Wofford football released the schedule for the 2016 season. The team opens their season on Sept. 1 at Tennessee Tech University. The terriers ended the 2015 season with a 5-6 overall record and a 3-4 Southern Conference record. Five starters will be lost while 20 starters will be returning for the 2016 season.
In preparing for the upcoming season, Mike Ayers, head coach, says the team is active in working on getting ready to go for the upcoming fall.
“It’s a difficult schedule… there are no easy ones, we’ll have to fight, claw and do everything we can do to be successful. We have a long way to go until we start that. Right now we are busy with the offseason schedule and we have an opportunity to get our guys fit and get them ready to go for spring practice.”
During week 2, the schedule introduces SEC team, Ole Miss, who ranked 10th in the nation after the 2015 season. Sept. 10 will be the first time in history that Wofford football faces Ole Miss. Ayers reports that the team is excited for this opportunity.
“I think the only way that you can prepare for this team is practicing hard and you’ve got to do everything you can as far as getting your guys up to speed on how they execute. I think the big key is confidence… it will be a tremendous challenge but we’re looking forward to it.”
Wofford football will also compete against ETSU for the first time since the Buccaneers reinstated their football program after a 12 year absence. Ayers states that because of this absence, there is little knowledge of the level of performance ETSU will bring to the field.
“We really do not understand how far their program has come or the type of players they are playing with. From what we understand they have made a lot of progress… We’ll have to do a lot of film evaluation, as well as play hard and execute well.”
Wofford will host five of the 11 games that will be played in the fall. The first of which will be against Johnson C. Smith University on Sept. 17. They will face rival team, Furman University, in Greenville on Nov. 5. The first three weeks will consist of non-conference play. Conference play will begin in Week 4 on Sept. 24 versus ETSU.
