Players-only meeting loss to Buffalo led to turnaround, run

BOCA RATON — At 1-3, the Florida Atlantic football team was in danger of losing the season.

They were headed toward yet another year of disappointment after a 34-31 loss to Buffalo on Sept. 23. It was after that defeat a few of the seniors decided it wasn’t going to affect the remainder of the year.

They called a playersonly meeting, with strength and conditioning coach Wilson Love the only member of the staff present. They aired their frustrations, and it was the beginning of the turnaround. The Owls have won five straight since and are on the cusp of their first Conference USA championship.

“It was real intense,” said linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair, one of the organizers of the meeting. “We tried to make sure we were all on the same page of what we’re trying to get accomplished. I think we were 1-3 at the time but we were making sure that everybody understood that that’s not what we’re going to do again.”

The Buffalo loss has been indeed the biggest key of the season. It occurred a week after the Owls had an impressive 45-0 victory against Bethune-Cookman. It was their first shutout in more than 10 years. It helped them forget about disappointing losses to Navy and Wisconsin to start the season. All appeared to be on the rise and then they followed it up with a clunker at Buffalo.

The loss was so upsetting to coach Lane Kiffin he called it embarrassing in the postgame interview.

“I think everything happens for a reason,” Kiffin said. “Maybe if we would have got by there and scored on that last drive or stopped them and won the game, maybe we wouldn’t have the same kind of an angry mentality the next week and keep rolling from there. I think that they came together and realized all the little things we need to do to be a good team.”

Not a week has passed that Kiffin hasn’t mentioned the Buffalo loss. He has mentioned it at least once in interviews during game weeks, using it as motivation to keep the players focused. Kiffin constantly reminds them their record should be 7-2 because they were clearly the better team.

Buffalo is now 4-6 and has lost four of the last five. The game was the first start for FAU quarterback Jason Driskel, who has settled since replacing sophomore Daniel Parr.

“I think we felt that we were better than they were, and we went out there and they beat us,” Driskel said. “We needed to make one play – on offense, especially, One explosive play and the game’s completely different, and we didn’t make it.”

The Owls can thank that night in Buffalo for helping put them in position for a school-record sixth consecutive victory Saturday at Louisiana Tech. They have used losses from season’s past, such as Western Kentucky, Old Dominion and Middle Tennessee State, to provide motivation but their last defeat this year has proven the biggest spark.

“It kind of turned us up because you don’t want to feel that feeling again,” running back Gregory Howell Jr. said. “It’s a feeling that we had in the past that we didn’t want to revert back to.”