By Mike London

mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Catawba College’s football team looks better than 2-5, has played better than 2-5, and is more dangerous than 2-5, but the standings don’t lie, and the frustrated Indians are 2-5 overall and 1-4 in the South Atlantic Conference.

Get one more stop in each of the four SAC losses and the Indians are 5-0 in the league right now and talking about championships and playoffs, but fourth-quarter stops have been hard to get, and they’ve been impossible to get in the final minutes. Catawba is allowing 35 points per game, and that makes winning a shaky proposition.

Playing without the quarterback (Preston Brown) and the receiver (Bo Pryor) who were counted on to lead the offense, Catawba has still managed to score 30 points per game. Credit the offensive coaches, the offensive line and several next-man-up guys, but mostly credit workhorse back LJ Turner.

Turner has been phenomenal. He has 1,068 rushing yards, second-best nationally in Division II.

That’s the good news. The bad news is it gets no easier for the Indians or for Turner this week. In fact, it probably will get harder when Catawba plays at Wingate at 3 p.m. on Saturday.

This is expected to be another setback for Catawba, and not a last-second or last-minute loss. Based on the stats, Wingate (5-1, 3-1) is considered to be the SAC’s best team by the Massey Ratings, even better than Lenoir-Rhyne and undefeated Carson-Newman. Wingate is favored by 27 over Catawba. Catawba is given a 4 percent chance of winning, which is not much better than the chances of an Elvis impersonator belting out the national anthem.

While Catawba was adding another link to its chain of misery last week against Newberry, Wingate was absolutely bashing — on the road — a Limestone team that had a great record.  Wingate led 31-0 at one point against the Saints and cruised to a 38-12 victory with 400 yards of balanced offense. Wingate won the turnover battle, 3-0, and Limestone was a brutal 2-for-15 on third-down conversions.

Wingate’s Kai Russell was named SAC Defensive Player of the Week for a two-sack effort.

Wingate is a top-20 team nationally in sacks with 18, but the biggest single problem that Wingate presents in a matchup with Catawba, which is 12th nationally in rushing offense, is that Wingate stuffs the run. Wingate’s run defense is ranked second nationally, allowing a meager 56 rushing yards per game. Turner usually has 56 yards after five minutes, so it will be interesting to see how that shakes out.

And one last bit of bad news. The Bulldogs also are second nationally as far as limiting first downs. They are stingy in that regard.

Wingate won last year’s meeting 31-13 and has won seven in a row and 13 of the last 15 in the series.