Trey Vaughan: Looking for continued improvement from Lions on gridiron

Jul. 15—I spent four seasons in the KXMS broadcast booth at Fred G. Hughes Stadium on the campus of Missouri Southern as a student radio broadcaster from 2015-18.

During that stretch, the MSSU football team went 4-40 and had a winless season in 2017.

Atiba Bradley has come in and gone 7-15 in two seasons as head coach, nearly doubling the win total the team had in the four-year stretch while I was in college. Bradley was hired in the spring of 2021 after COVID-19 spoiled the 2020 season by forcing a cancellation across the United States.

If you count Bradley's first game as head coach — a spring game in 2021 — his record is 8-15. The Lions beat Southern Nazarene 21-20 in March of 2021.

In 2021, Southern finished 3-8 for its best single-season win total since 2014, when it ended the season 4-7. Last year, the Lions matched that 2014 record.

That 7-15 record over the past two seasons is the program's best since the 2013-14 seasons in which it finished 11-10.

MSSU finished tied for 8th in the MIAA standings last year, another program best since finishing tied for 7th in 2014.

I know a .318 win percentage isn't necessarily anything to write home about. But, after sitting in the booth for four years to only see the team come away with four wins, it's hard not to get a little excited about the past two seasons.

To my recollection, it wasn't often during those four years that the Lions would have the same quarterback under center from game-to-game. It wasn't just a new quarterback each season, they were shuffling in a new guy at the position most weeks to be the starter.

T.J. Fleeton spent a lot of time taking snaps for the Lions, but there were plenty others mixed in throughout the years. Dante Vandeven, Tyquan Hayes, Brayden Scott, Sean Kelly and more took snaps at the quarterback position for MSSU across those four seasons.

Different under Bradley

That's been much different since Bradley took over as head coach. Dawson Herl took all but a few of the snaps in 2021 and split time with Luke Sampson last year. Herl had gotten the majority of pass attempts until the final three games, when Sampson took over. Herl still finished with 169 attempts to Sampson's 118.

It seems Sampson may be in line to get the starting nod from Week 1 with Herl's Twitter account showing that he is now a member of the Central Oklahoma Bronchos football team — a team he and the Lions beat last year.

Sampson is a redshirt sophomore and is accompanied by two other redshirt sophomores, David Oplotnik and Isaac Kittrell, as the three QBs on the Lions' roster.

Heading into his third season at the helm, Bradley seems to have found more consistent play under center than any of the head coaches during my time at MSSU.

I find that to be a key to getting success. There are many more positions on the football field, but the one that touches the ball on every offensive play should be consistent. It helps to be able to build a rapport with the rest of the offense. That is assumably harder to do when you're not playing or starting every week.

At the Division II level, you can't be in the fifth week of your season still searching for an identity on your offense. There's too much talent — especially in the MIAA — to not know your gameplan or have a pretty good understanding of how to utilize your talent as you begin the season. It seems Bradley is doing that by winning more games and playing in lots of close games.

It also helps having a running back carrying the ball for nearly 1,600 yards the past two seasons. Former Joplin Eagle Nathan Glades has totaled 1,592 yards after running for 855 last year.

Glades became the first MSSU running back to amass that many yards on the ground since Will Gregory (1,203) in a two-year span. No ball carrier between Gregory and Glades broke 1,000 yards. Gregory's 1,203 yards came during the 2014-15 seasons. The closest was Josh Hadley in 2016-17 with 952.

I'm looking for this same success from the Lions this fall and more. The season begins on Aug. 31 with a home game against perennial powerhouse of Northwest Missouri State University.

In my eyes, a successful season would mean a winning record. That would require Southern to improve its win total by two from last year. A 6-5 record would be nice to see in Joplin for the first time since 2013.

The Lions were 4-2 last year after a win on Oct. 8 against Lincoln. They would go on to lose three straight games by just one possession. That's the focus I would have heading into 2023 — finding ways to win a few more of those close ball games. I expect Bradley and company to have the Lions ready for those moments after going 1-3 in one-possession games last year.

6-5 won't get you a shot a national championship, but it inches you closer to where you want to be as a winning program. A winning record at least gets people talking about you and draws some attention with a finish in the top half of a very tough MIAA conference.