The G5 Hive Worker Bee Series
2024 - Kent State Golden Flashes
Welcome to my substack - TipsTrendsTakes. I (Luke) do a podcast with my co-host Justice called The G5 Hive every Monday night ~10:15 EST. This is live on Twitter and YouTube. You can also follow us in podcast form (Spotify and Apple). We recently started our Worker Bee Series where we do interviews with G5 beat reporters, student paper journalists, and in some cases superfans. We aim to give you the most accurate information out there, and who else better than the ones who are around the teams the most.
These articles will be transcripts from the interview. I would like to note these are not a complete transcript. These articles will only cover the offensive side of the ball. If you would wish to hear about the defensive side of the ball or NIL type questions, I would highly suggest watching/listening!
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Welcome to the G5 Hive and our next installment of our Worker Bee series, where we deep dive into G5 college football landscape with the folks that know the teams the best. If you're watching us on YouTube, please hit that like and subscribe button. And if you're listening to us in podcast form, please leave a rate and review.
Today we'll be taking a look at the Kent State Golden Flashes who finished 1-11 in 2023, and they recently wrapped up their 2024 spring practice with their spring game on April 27th. We have a special guest joining us today. Please welcome to the show Gabe Collura, Sports Director at TV2KSU, covering Kent State athletics and high school sports around Portage County and the voice of Kent State hockey.
Gabe can be found @gabecollura on X. Welcome to the show, Gabe. Thanks for having me, guys. Good to be here.
Well, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what led you into being interested in journalism and sports reporting? Yeah. So as a kid, I mean, I always played video games growing up, right? You play the sports video games and I became enamored with turning off the commentary, doing it myself. I still do that.
And I wanted to make it a career. So, yeah. I mean, that's all I can really think of.
I mean, that's really when I became interested. I mean, I started watching NHL hockey in 2008 when the Penguins played in the Winter Classic. I'm a huge Penguins fan.
So, yeah, I mean, hockey was my first love. Awesome. So Kent State had a disappointing season in 2023, but hopefully they can turn things around here in 2024.
Based on what you saw in the spring, what do you think they've done to try to get back on the right track here? Yeah, for me, I mean, they really revamped the coaching staff. I mean, there were a lot of inside promotions. Mark Watson, new running backs coach, CJ Robbins, new linebackers and special teams coordinator.
And then Dave Duggan actually stepped down from the DC spot in early April to take a head coaching gig in high school in Mississippi. So Kody Morgan ended up taking the DC role. He coached corners at North Dakota State from 18 to 21.
I think he was involved in like four of their national championships. So, yeah, there's a lot of change on the coaching side of things and obviously new offensive coordinator, which I think we're about to talk about right now. Yeah.
Kent State has a new offensive coordinator in Mark Carney, but he is a familiar face at Kent State as he was most recently the tight ends coach. What can you tell us about Coach Carney's offensive scheme and maybe what can we expect here in 2024? Yeah, I mean, Coach Carney's sets, they're not too different from what we're used to seeing at Kent State. I mean, the last few years, you know, under Sean Lewis, it was a lot of RPOs, a lot of just really quick, quick, quick, get as much plays off as you can.
I think it's going to change a little bit. You're going to see a lot more varied tempos with Carney instead of just go, go, go all the time. You're still going to see the RPOs.
You're still going to see zone reads, but there's going to be motion on every play and really just mixing up the tempos. That's what I noticed the most. I watched some of his Charlotte film when he was the offensive coordinator at Charlotte, and that's really what you can expect.
It's not going to be too, too different, but it's going to be a bit of a fresh look. Yeah. On offense, it all kind of starts with the quarterback, and Kent State has a great history of quarterbacks.
We saw some of those highlights in the video there with Julian Edelman and Dustin Crum. Yeah. And they returned Tommy Ulatowski, who started three games in 2023, as well as Devin Kargman, who also started a game in 2023, and Dru DeShields, who redshirted last season while he was recovering from injury.
They also brought in J.D. Sherrod, coming over from Troy. How did the quarterback room look and shape up over the spring? Yeah. Right now, QB1, it's Tommy's job to lose.
Tommy Touchdown, we call him here at Kent State. He was kind of the guy that was thrust into the role when Alaimo kind of wasn't really working out last year. I mean, even though Alaimo did start a game, Ulatowski still played.
It was kind of a two-quarterback set, kind of like an open competition for most of the year. I think it would be smart of them to make sure that that doesn't happen again. But right now, I think it's Tommy's job to lose.
And I feel like J.D. will probably start the season as the backup. He led a really nice drive in the first half of the spring game. He's a good athlete.
He's a little bit hindered by his release. It's a tad bit slow and the arm strength, I think, has room for improvement. But I mean, I think he'd be a good MAC quarterback.
I don't think it hinders his ability to play for this roster. I think he'd be a solid backup. And then obviously, it's good to have a guy with experience like Kargman.
I would expect him to start as the three. How is Dru DeShields’ recovery coming along? Yeah. So he's been a light participant in practice all spring, pretty typical for an injury.
He did not play in the spring game though. And I don't have a timetable on him right now, but who knows? We could see him at some point. Absolutely.
I mean, I know he was someone when he was brought in from a recruiting standpoint, people were pretty high on him and really excited about him coming to Kent State. Yeah, yeah. He could be an exciting player.
Yeah. Moving on to the running game, which had struggles early on but improved as the season progressed in 2023. They do lose their second leading rusher in Jaylen Thomas to graduation, but do return their leading rusher in Gavin Garcia, along with Xavier Williams and Curtis Douglas.
They get a big boost from Ky Thomas, a transfer from Minnesota who had to sit out last season due to the transfer rules at that time, which have now changed. But how does this group look in the spring? Yeah, Gav's a really solid runner. He always has been.
I remember watching him his freshman year and I was like, hey, they might've gotten something special with this kid. He doesn't necessarily have the size, but he makes up for it in heart and that's what you need out of those guys that are a little smaller. But Gavin's a hard runner.
Of course, Xavier Williams, he's really more of a receiving back. I think they view him as a third down guy. And he's had some health issues lately.
He's kind of struggled to stay on the field in his first few years here in college. I can't really tell you much about Curtis Douglas, but this Ky Thomas kid, transfer from Minnesota, there's a lot to be excited about with him. He's super, super explosive and he has really excellent vision, I think.
He's really agile, he makes really good cuts, and he's actually really underrated in pass protection too, which even though they're returning all five starters on the offensive line, it still never hurts to have a good blocker back there. So you mentioned just this immersion of Thomas here. Did someone emerge in that as RB1 or is it Gav's job? I would think it's Ky Thomas.
Because going back to the connection to Minnesota, Kenni Burns was his position coach for the Golden Gophers. This is a guy who runs hard, he's really impressive with what I've seen from him. I kind of would expect him to be the one and Gav will get his carries and in the passing game you might see X a little bit as well.
Despite the rotation at quarterback last season, the passing game definitely had its moments and probably the brightest was the emergence of Chrishon McCray, who was on track for a big season when he got injured in week 10 and missed the remainder of the year. He comes back along with Luke Floriea. They do lose Trell Harris, Jameel Gardner, but bring in Stanley King from Northwestern State and Sebastian Brown from Michigan State.
How did the wide receivers look in the spring? They looked good. I think it was important for them to get some size on the perimeter and they definitely did that with Stanley King, who's six foot six, started his career at Rutgers and now he's at Kent State after a little stint there at Northwestern State. He's going to be your Johnny Wilson type player from your Florida State receiver.
Stanley Brown, of course, the Michigan State transfer, he was there since 2020, red shirted. He only played seven snaps at Michigan State, but I think that it's a good sign because it brings determination. A guy with maybe a chip on his shoulder that he wasn't able to see the field.
He's really talented. He actually played quarterback in high school just near Detroit, but the receiving room is looking a lot more improved from last year, I would say for sure. How is Chrishon McCray's recovery coming along? Have they set any timeline for him? Yeah, he'll be ready.
He played in the spring game. He had a touchdown and 52 yards on what was the final drive of the game. He's wearing a single digit number now.
He's wearing number two, so that's a pretty big deal at Kent State. Awesome. I think we can assume that McCray will be one of the starting receivers.
Did anyone else step up to join him as a starter? Yeah, we talked about it. Sebastian Brown, I think he'll be a really important player for them moving forward. All right.
In 2023, the tight ends were not heavily involved in the passing game, but now with the tight ends coach becoming the O.C., do you think there'll be any changes under Coach Kearney? Not necessarily. I know that Coach Kearney loves his two tight end sets mainly for blocking purposes from what I've seen. If there were to be a guy who I'd like to see involved in the passing game, it would be Hunter Hopperton.
This guy just transferred here from Rhode Island. He's a local kid, went to Streetsboro High School, which is just 20 minutes/27 minutes up the road. His brother Preston actually came here as well as an athlete.
I would say don't expect too much change from the tight end position. The two guys that were mainly involved last year with Keenan Orr and Hayden Junker are no longer with the team. Keenan graduated.
I don't think Hayden's playing football anymore, so I could be wrong on that. Yeah, I wouldn't expect too much, but if you're going to see a guy step up as the tight end one, it's probably going to be Hunter Hopperton. That's my guess.
You mentioned the offensive line earlier. We're going to talk about the running backs. That definitely looks like it could be a strength of the 2024 team as they return all five starters from 2023 as well as several key backups.
How did that unit look in the spring? It's one of the few position groups in this program that's had some continuity. We're still feeling the aftershocks of Sean Lewis taking the Colorado job and eventually ending up at San Diego State. I think Matt Limegrover, who's the run game coordinator and the offensive line coach, has done a really good job with this group.
Matt's brought 30 years of coaching experience to the program. He was the run game coordinator for that 2016 Penn State team with Saquon Barkley that won the Big Ten championship game. I think it was also really important for the offensive line to get bigger, and they definitely did that.
They've got a ton of guys that are 6'5 and taller. This unit, like I said, has continuity. It's one of the few position groups that had it.
They looked good in the spring, and they're going to love to run block for Ky Thomas, man. I'll tell you what. If you had to pick an offensive player to have a breakout-type season in 2024, who would that be? I would say Ky Thomas.
I've been singing his praises the whole time so far. Like he said, the transfer rules, he had to sit out a year. He's going to come back looking to prove a point.