Craine shares credit after monster game
Other than his body hurting “a little bit,” Derrick Craine was feeling pretty good Saturday afternoon.
The 5-foot-10, 205-pound University of Tennessee at Chattanooga running back, who on Monday was named the Southern Conference offensive player of the week, was coming off a record performance. Moments after the game, he was “doing great,” sipping some water and crediting everybody around him for his 222-yard, two-touchdown performance against Samford.
As the game wore on, Craine got better, finishing with six carries for 112 yards in the third quarter and nine carries for 82 yards in the fourth. That 194-yard total would have eclipsed his career high for a game by 25 yards.
After a first half in which he had no carry longer than 6 yards, Craine had seven carries of double-digit yards in the final 30 minutes, including a 35-yard touchdown on a fourth-and-1 play and an 18-yarder that set up his final run from a yard out with 1:36 to play.
When told about his second-half stats, Craine shook his head and simply said, “Great day.”
Then he talked about Mocs quarterback Alejandro Bennifield and the rest of the offense.
“Dro and the receivers were out there in the first half, he threw it up and they came down with it, so Samford’s defense had to respect that,” Craine said. “Our O-line, all those guys were out there blocking as hard as they could, making things easy for me and giving me creases to hit.
“When I see it (the hole), I did like (running backs coach Shawn) Bryson said, ‘Slow to, accelerate through,’ so everything we did in practice translated to the field today.”
The offensive line was disappointed in its performance against Furman in the previous game and really focused on winning at the point of attack. They were able to celebrate Craine’s performance with the running back — the team’s 285 rushing yards are a season high.
“Derrick’s our guy. He’s our running back and we depend on him a lot,” offensive lineman Corey Levin said. “For him to go out and get 200-plus yards rushing really set the tone for the rest of the season as we get going deeper into conference play. It’s great for us.”
It was a team effort, as 220 of the team’s 285 yards came in the final 30 minutes after Bennifield had 206 first-half passing yards. Mocs coach Russ Huesman has always loved Craine’s hard-nosed efforts as well as his team-first mentality, and that was all on full display Saturday.
The highlight of Craine’s day was a 26-yard gain late in the third quarter on first-and-10. Craine was initially hit by a Bulldog at the Samford 43-yard line before carrying two defenders all the way to the 28.
“I don’t care if he has 2 yards or 222, he’s a fantastic individual and I’m so proud of him,” Huesman said. “That dude runs hard, man. I love that kid. He also had a lot of creases in there, so give the O-line a lot of credit, too.”
Ribeiro also honored
UTC kicker Henrique Ribeiro was named the SoCon special teams player of the week after making both of his field-goal attempts, all five of his extra points and averaging 34 yards on three punts.
It was his first time being honored this season after being named player of the week three consecutive times in 2015.
He said Saturday he feels “back to normal” after putting too much pressure on himself during a slow start to the season in which he missed an extra point and had a field goal blocked.
His second field goal Saturday, from 48 yards, set a career high.
“I feel I was in a slump at the start of the season,” he said. “I have high expectations for myself, so I just decided to tone it down and enjoy it. It’s my last year and we want to win everything we can, and the best way to do that is to enjoy playing football, going out to practice and come out here to play.”