TUPELO - A few days before the Mississippi MudCats' season opener, head coach Brian Brents was talking about the role of defense in the indoor football game.

"If we can get one defensive stop a quarter, or maybe five stops for the whole game, then our offense should put us in a position to win," Brents said.

Saturday night, Brents' team had six stops in the Fayetteville Guard's first six possessions. At that point, the MudCats led 39-0 on the way to an 82-34 victory.

The paying crowd of 2,442 - more about that a little later - was treated to a big win, certainly, but it was also a lot of fun.

I was in the house for last year's 80-20 win against Baltimore and just remember wishing it would hurry up and end. This was way better.

Flipping through my notebook, I come up with these highlights from Saturday night:

- Tommy Jones started the game with two touchdowns on his first two completions - including a beautiful throw to Darryl Carter for a 46-yard TD that made it 13-0.

- The one moment I wish I could could go back and watch again on YouTube - Carter's diving, one-handed back-of-the-end-zone catch of a 4-yard Jones pass that made it 31-0.

- An end zone deflection by defensive back Ben Wicher that wound up in the hands of teammate Jonathan George, who then returned the interception 51 yards for a TD to make it 39-0.

- William Stewart - all 305 pounds of him - doing cartwheels on the field after the home team pushed their lead to 52-8 on Jones' sixth TD pass - his third of the night to ICC product Lemans Casimier.

- Kicker Trey Crum making a score-saving tackle after a snap got away from him and wound up in the hands of a Fayetteville player. A good tackle, too, not one of those reluctant-kicker tackles you sometimes see on NFL Sundays.

- Three safeties for the aggressive MudCats defense, set up in part when Crum's three one-point kickoffs put the ball on the Fayetteville 5.

- A handful of great kickoff returns by Josh Smith, who was just ... this ... close to busting at least one of them for a TD. On one return, he put his team in business just 4 yards from the paydirt.

- Backup QB Omarr Connor, formerly of Mississippi State, scoring the night's last TD on an option play after a pretty rough introduction to the indoor game on his first series of the night.

That's at least eight solid football highlights right there. If you were sitting in the $7 seats, by my math, that would be about 88 cents a highlight - cheaper than ITunes.

And, after the game was over, the MudCats eagerly greeted their fans and signed autographs for free.

Honest numbers
While the game was still rolling along, general manager Brooks Ayers delivered to me the head count referred to earlier. Unlike some of last year's attendance figures concocted by the former ownership, it had some grounding in reality - it was based on actual tickets sold and real bottoms that could be seen in the BCS Arena seats.

As Brents said about the game itself, 2,442 is a good start for the team's second year, but with plenty of room for improvement.

And some of that improvement could come when the 2,442 who were there deliver this message to all those who weren't:

You shoulda seen it. John L. Pitts (john.pitts@djournal.com) is sports editor of the Daily Journal. Appeared originally in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, 3/24/2008, section C , page 4

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