Inside Elon Football With Taylor Durham, Week 5

Elon football color commentator Taylor Durham will take a few minutes each week to offer up his thoughts on the previous week's game as well as the upcoming week in Phoenix football.

Tomorrow afternoon, the Phoenix returns to Rhodes Stadium after road trips to Richmond and Statesboro in hopes of evening up the conference mark at 1-1 and snapping a two-game slide as Elon welcomes in a Samford team that is also looking to get back on the right foot in conference action having dropped a decision to Appalachian State last Saturday in Birmingham.

The Phoenix fell on Saturday night in Statesboro by 17 to a vastly improved Georgia Southern ball club 38-21 but there were positives to pull out of the defeat including Brandon Wiggins and Joshua Jones continuing their stellar play at linebacker with double-digit stop nights. In fact, on Saturday afternoon, two of the best linebackers in the league have at it with Brandon and Samford's Bryce Smith squaring off (Smith leads the league with 11.5 tackles per game while Brandon is averaging 10 per outing and ranks in the top five). Speaking of match-ups, it should be a lot of fun tomorrow afternoon to watch two of the best in the league on the offensive side of the football in Scott Riddle and Chris Evans. Evans, the starting tailback for Pat Sullivan, ranks fifth in the conference in rushing although the Phoenix did a great job in keeping him under wraps last year as part of the 27-7 win that clinched the playoff bid holding him to under 100 yards on the afternoon. Hopefully, the Phoenix can have the same success tomorrow and the same result.

The rain that hit the area during the mid-week should be out of the picture and perfect skies should greet the Phoenix. On top of Family Weekend, Elon will hold two ceremonies during the game. Just before kick, Terrell Hudgins joins Willie Tart, Richard McGeorge and Bobby Hedrick by having his number retired. It is certainly a deserving honor for the Rocky Mount, N.C. native who finished his playing career at Elon with 395 grabs for over 5,200 yards and 52 touchdowns. At halftime, the Phoenix hand out more honors as the softball team is recognized for their Southern Conference Championship during the 2010 spring season. Coach Patti Raduenz will visit with us on the radio during halftime and Scott Riddle will join me during the halftime break as well. Scott and I had a chance to visit earlier this week concerning the retirement of Terrell’s jersey and the impact that he had on the field and off the field for Phoenix football

As always, we hope to see you at Rhodes Stadium tomorrow afternoon when toe meets leather at 1:30 p.m. or we hope that you will have the radio broadcast teed up and ready to go when David Hibbard joins me in the Cox Toyota broadcast booth for the Best Western Countdown to Kickoff at 12:30 p.m.

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