Best yet to come for Lobo Owens
Running back looked like his former self against Colorado State
Star running back Teriyon Gipson, with his nation’sbest 8.8-yard average per carry in 2016, was gone as the New Mexico Lobos entered the 2017 season.
That was OK, though, because Tyrone Owens, with his nation’s second-best average per carry of 8 yards even, was back.
Right?
Right?
Well ...
Through the Lobos’ first six games of the season, Owens, a 5-foot-9, 187-pound redshirt junior from Manor, Texas, was averaging a pedestrian 4.4 yards per carry. His longest run of the season was 24 yards. After exceeding the 100-yard mark five times last year, he’d gained no more than 84 yards in a game this season.
Then, last Friday, the T.O. of old made a most welcome appearance. Owens rushed for 159 yards on 16 carries, with a 25-yard touchdown run and a long gain of 54 yards, in a 27-24 loss to Colorado State.
Nothing, of course, is guaranteed. But Owens and UNM coach Bob Davie believe there are more yards and more
touchdowns where those came from.
“I think, against Colorado State, he showed that maybe the best is yet to come down here in the stretch,” Davie said.
What, though, was the problem? Why had Owens not been the dynamic runner the first half of 2017 that he’d been the previous year?
Flashback: On Nov. 19, 2016, Owens rushed for 157 yards and had a 79-yard touchdown run during a 49-31 loss to Colorado State in Fort Collins, Colo. But in that game, he suffered a foot injury that kept him out of a regularseason-ending victory over Wyoming and limited him to three carries for 13 yards in UNM’s New Mexico Bowl victory over UTSA.
The injury continued to limit him in 2017 and into fall camp. When the season began, Owens said this week, he hadn’t been able to get the practice repetitions he needed to be at his best.
As fast as he is — he ran a 10.81 100-meter dash as a senior at Manor High School — strength has been an equal partner in his success. He was a champion powerlifter at Manor as well as a sprinter.
“I feel like (the injury) did hurt me a little bit as far as my physicality,” he said. “... I felt like I was missing that extra, hard-nosed (edge).”
Davie was seeing what Owens was feeling.
“He couldn’t practice the way he (normally) practices,” Davie said. “He’s a hard-nosed, every-down, fullon guy . ... He wasn’t healthy early, and he didn’t have that edge that he (normally) had in practice.”
Offensive line play, meanwhile, has been a season-long concern.
Two starting spots, left guard (Chris Lewis, a departed senior) and right tackle (Avery Jordan, who moved to the left side to replace all-conference performer Reno Henderson) needed to be filled.
And just when it appeared the lineup was starting to solidify, true freshman Teton Saltes and sophomore Izrael Castellanos went down with injuries.
For the above reasons, and others involving the quality of the opposition, UNM’s signature running game has been inconsistent this fall, three times exceeding 300 yards, three times failing to reach 200.
Once again, nothing is guaranteed. Wyoming, the Lobos’ opponent Saturday, has allowed an average of just 174 yards rushing and 3.7 yards per carry through seven games.
But not only is Owens feeling good physically, he’s feeling good about the offensive line that created the running lanes for him against Colorado State.
“I’m real confident,” he said. “Those first five games, it’s been kind of a figure-it-out, kind of see who’s who (in the offensive line). I feel like last game we figured out who’s who, and now from here on we’ve just got to go.
“I trust those guys, and they trust me.”
The Lobos (3-4 overall, 1-3 in Mountain West Conference play) will need all the trust they can muster if they’re to win six games and qualify for a third straight bowl appearance. Three of the remaining five games, including tonight’s game in Laramie, are on the road.
Winning three more, Owens said, is thinking small.
“I feel like we can win the rest of the games,” he said. “Go undefeated the rest of the year.”
THE ODDS: After opening as a twopoint underdog, the Lobos had been made a one-point favorite against the Cowboys as of Thursday evening.