The Elon University football team’s loss to Furman University Oct. 27 practically ended the Phoenix’s chances of reaching the Football Championship Subdivision.

So there would be nothing to play for anymore, right?

Quite the opposite.

“We still have a lot to play for,” said senior defensive lineman Olufemi Lamikanra. “We still have a chance to get a winning season, which would be better from last year. Would be (head coach Jason Swepson’s) first winning season, which would mean a lot to the team.”

The Phoenix sits at 3-5 overall right now with three games to go. Doing a little math, one would find that wins in each of those last three games would give Elon a 6-5 record overall. With no playoffs and no Southern Conference championship mathematically possible, the winning season may be all they have left.

“We’ve got a lot of goals that we want to accomplish,” said head coach Jason Swepson. “The kids don’t want to quit, the coaches don’t want to quit. We’ve still got a lot to play for, we’ve got a chance for a winning season. We’re still building here.”

To start on that quest for an over-.500 record, Elon faces The Citadel at 2 p.m. Saturday in a SoCon matchup.

While Elon is out of the playoff picture, the Bulldogs from The Citadel are on the outskirts of a playoff race, attempting to reach the seven-win plateau thought to be crucial for an at-large bid into the playoffs. The Citadel would have to win out to reach that seven-win mark.

What the Citadel also presents is a familiar offense: that dreaded triple-option.

Swepson said he watched the game tape from Elon’s devastating 49-24 loss to Wofford College Sept. 29, when the Terriers’ offense piled on 500 rushing yards, a SoCon-record 321 from senior fullback Eric Breitenstein. He gleaned something the Phoenix has to concentrate on.

“I think we watched it and just determined that we’ve got to stop the trap,” he said. “It’s been hurting us all year, the inside run. When we played Georgia Southern (University Sept. 22) and other teams, when they run sideways, we can run with them. But we’re just having trouble stopping the inside run. So we’ll see if we can get a little better at that and stop it.”

The Citadel has three players that have rushed for over 300 yards this season and has amassed 2,411 rushing yards and 26 rushing touchdowns this year. Junior fullback Darien Robinson has 90 carries for 701 yards, junior quarterback Ben Dupree has rushed 122 times for 610 yards and sixth-year senior running back Rickey Anderson has carried the ball 44 times for 388 yards.

That running game is something Lamikanra said the Phoenix must face with a strict sense of discipline.

“We have to be disciplined,” he said. “We have to do our job as a defense. We harped on that after the Wofford game.”

Stopping the run is the focus. Swepson said his team has a chance to “fix” what went wrong before.

“We’ve got a chance to fix it and we’ll see where we go with it,” he said. “However the game turns out, we’re just hoping to be on top. If we’ve got to win 3-0, we’ll take it. If we’ve got to win 45-41 or 52-51, we’ll take it. We’re just going down there trying to win a football game, win it on the road, something we haven’t done yet this year.”

The Phoenix offense struggled against Furman. Three of the trips to the red zone Elon made against Furman only produced three points, a fumble returned for a touchdown and a turnover on downs.

Swepson said there’s not much he or the coaches can do, the players just must improve.

“I don’t know what you can do as a coach,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything else you can do as coaches. Players got to make plays, coaches coach.”

Something that may be crucial to that is the Phoenix establishing a run game of its own, something almost non-existent so far this season. Stats show Elon attempting to create a run game (32 rushing attempts, 33 passing attempts against Furman), but the Phoenix produced just 80 yards against the Paladins’ defense. Fifty of those yards came on a first quarter drive on six straight runs, leading to senior quarterback Thomas Wilson’s first touchdown pass of the day to senior wide receiver Aaron Mellette that tied the game at 7.

But it slowly died as the game progressed, producing just 30 yards on the ground for the rest of the game.

Junior offensive lineman Clay Johnson said success in that area relies on teamwork.

“When everybody starts playing as an individual, which kind of happened later in the game, it crumbles,” he said. “For the offensive line and the run game, it’s very important for everybody to sync together to establish the run. We dissolved towards the end of the game.”

However the Phoenix do it, the team desires a win, as Swepson said, whether it’s 3-0 or 52-51. And they’ll use the ten seniors on the team as a motivation to get that winning season.

“As a guy who’s got one more chance at it, you play for the seniors,” Johnson said. “These seniors are some of my best friends, the guys that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. You go out and play for them and you want to be able to look them in the eye when it’s all said and done and tell them you gave your all for them because when it comes your time, you hope the younger guys can do that for you too.”

Game Notes

  • Mellette has at least two receiving touchdowns in each of the last six games, notching 15 total on the year. With three games left, he is just four TDs shy of Randy Moss' Southern Conference record of 19 touchdowns in a single season set in 1996.
  • Elon junior punter Kenton Beal and The Citadel senior running back Rickey Anderson both graduated from Cape Coral High School in Florida.
  • On Nov. 3, 2007, former Elon quarterback Scott Riddle passed for a SoCon-record 534 yards, but the Phoenix fell 52-49 at Furman.
  • The Citadel holds a 6-5 margin in the all-time series, but Elon has won the last four games.