The UTPB Falcons are closing in on Senior Night this Saturday evening at Ratliff Stadium against the Western New Mexico Mustangs and the team’s head coach, Justin Carrigan, is proud of senior wide receiver MJ Link’s performance this season.
“MJ has been fantastic all year,” Carrigan said in Monday’s press conference. “I would think he will be a possible All American.”
Link has 51 catches for 741 yards and nine touchdowns this season, all good for second among all receivers in the Lone Star Conference.
Link is coming off last Saturday’s 24-21 win over Eastern New Mexico in Portales, N.M. with seven catches for 129 yards and two touchdowns including a 54-yard catch on the opening drive of the game.
When discussing Link’s impact to the Falcons, Carrigan mentioned that there will be one thing he will be missing on offense for the foreseeable future, following Friday’s season finale.
“I will miss all of the touchdowns MJ scored,” Carrigan said.
The Falcons will be facing the Mustangs (5-4 overall and 4-3 in Lone Star Conference play) – a team tied for third place in the LSC.
UTPB (4-5, 3-4) is currently in a three-way tie for fourth place.
“(The Mustangs) are good,” Carrigan said. “They are the best passing offense in the conference. They have a good defense. They are loaded up with transfers, flying around making plays. Should be a tremendous challenge coming up.”
The Mustangs’ sophomore quarterback, Devin Larsen, leads the LSC in nearly every statistic, including passing yards (2,285), touchdowns (20) and passing yards per game (253.9).
>> Basketball
The Falcons are fast-approaching opening night, which is just ten days away and head coach Kyle Tolin could not be more excited about his team’s evolution through the first few weeks of practices and scrimmages.
“We have made strides and improvements, and we’re able to see some stuff so this will be big week for us to see if we can take the next step in our progression,” Tolin said.
Tolin felt that the team has taken big steps on one side of the ball as the Falcons have stepped up their game due to their tenacity on the court.
“I think we played harder on the defensive side of the ball,” Tolin said. “We got more deflections and we disrupted the team’s offense more throughout the week.”
On the other side of the court, Tolin believes the accuracy was present.
“The scoring was more efficient,” Tolin added. “Our number of paint touches on offense was more efficient.”
The Falcons’ coach believes that there are some improvements that should be made between now and the opening tip-off.
“We have got to improve our transition game and that we’ve got to stay on the ball a little bit better than we did last week,” Tolin said. “We’ve got to clean up some stuff as far as screening and ball movement offensively as well.”
>> Follow Sameer Malla on Twitter at @OA_SameerMalla
