Despite starting the season with back-to-back losses, Waynesburg University football have dominated time of possession and outscored opponents in the first half.

One of the biggest issues of the better part of last year and this year, according to head coach Chris Smithley, is the team’s struggles in the second half—particularly the third quarter. Since the beginning of last season, Waynesburg has been outscored 171-61 in the second half of football games, including a 44-16 clip through just two weeks this season.

“It’s just a lot of little things that we need to do a better job with,” said Smithley. “That first drive coming out in the third quarter has not been good to us in a year and a half. It hasn’t been good to us. We are aware of that, we have evaluated that, we know that’s the situation. We’re doing everything to do our best to prepare those guys to go out there and start the third quarter the right way.”

In that same time frame, the Yellow Jackets have been outscored 205-124 in the first half of games, including 191-103 last season, but the Yellow Jackets have outscored opponents in 2018, 21-14 thus far in the first half.

However, looking back to the 2017 season, Waynesburg’s three most lopsided losses were at Case Western Reserve (56-21), Thomas More (59-7) and Washington & Jefferson (42-0). Those three teams finished a combined 28-6 last year, and two of them, W&J and Case Western, made it to the NCAA Division III Football Playoffs. In the first half of those games, Waynesburg was outscored 108-7.

If you take away those games against arguably the three best teams in the Presidents’ Athletic Conference, the Yellow Jackets outscored their opponents in the first half 96-83 in 2017, and 117-97 overall including this season. Taking those same three games out of the equation for the second half of games, the Yellow Jackets still have been outscored 115-47 overall since the beginning of last season.

Continuing to build off that, Waynesburg was leading or tied within one score of its opponents seven times last year, yet only won two of those games. This season, Waynesburg was leading Muskingum 17-7 at the half and lost 31-24, while it trailed 7-3 against Westminster before ultimately falling 27-12.

Smithley feels part of the problem lies in the team’s inability to finish a drive.

“I think with our offense, we have to do better in the red zone,” Smithley said. “When we get in that red zone we have to score touchdowns, and we didn’t do that on Saturday. That hurt us.”

Over the first two games of this year, Waynesburg has converted its red zone opportunities into points five out of seven times, good for a 71-percent success rate. However, only three of those seven trips, 43-percent, have resulted in touchdowns. Opponents against Waynesburg have converted 86-percent of their red zone opportunities for points and 71-percent of those trips ended with a touchdown, respectively.

The Yellow Jackets have also dominated time of possession, holding the ball for 36:28 of the game compared to 23:31 for its opponents. Smithley is optimistic of how his offense and defense have looked so far, but knows that capitalizing on red zone opportunities will be the key to breaking through the second half slumps.

“Other than just finishing with points and touchdowns, I mean I can’t be more pleased with how our offense is operating,” said Smithley. “Our defense—they’ve played 84 snaps in two football games. 43 snaps against Westminster and 41 snaps against Muskingum…That’s what most defenses play in one game, and that’s two games for us. We are 14th in the country in time of possession, we’re just not finishing our drives.”

As Smithley and the team go through practice this week and look to avoid the second half woes, Smithley emphasized the Yellow Jackets are going to keep it simple against Bethany.

“They’re not going to be giving you a bunch of different looks on defense, and they’re pretty sound, which is a good thing for them and a challenge for us,” Smithley said. “When we’re watching the film and putting a plan together, we know what we’re going to get from them. We’re going to simplify and we’re going to try and make this thing as easy as possible from a game plan and we are going to just go down there and play the best football game we can possibly play again.”