Troy QB getting noticed

TROY — Levi Brown cringes when he hears a teammate on scholarship talk about how bad the cafeteria food is at Troy University.

“I’m like, ‘Crap, at least you’re getting yours paid for,’ ” Brown said. “I’ve got to pay for my own and it’s still not very good.”

That’s right. The Trojans’ new starting quarterback is still a walk-on. But he’s still in line to take most of the snaps Saturday at North Texas after throwing for 253 yards and two touchdowns on 18-of-28 passing in last week’s 33-23 win over FIU.

Head coach Larry Blakeney said Brown doesn’t have a scholarship yet because walk-ons can’t get one in their first four semesters unless they’re counted on with the 25 on National Signing Day.

“We promised Levi that if he came here and was in the mix after four semesters, he’d get one,” Blakeney said. “Since he came here mid-year (in 2007), he’ll get one next spring.”

But it hasn’t been all bad. Brown has a varsity locker and people are starting to recognize the 6-foot-4 junior after his sterling performance.

“I’ve gotten a few friend requests on Facebook (a social networking site) from people I don’t know, if that counts for anything,” Brown said. “Other than that, everything’s normal.”

Brown, a native of Mount Juliet, Tenn., went to Richmond under the impression that the Spiders would run a shotgun, spread-it-out offense, but the personnel wasn’t there. After two years, he decided to transfer.

He wasn’t that interested in Troy, but sent film there as leverage because he was hoping for an offer from nearby Middle Tennessee.

“I was thinking hopefully they would offer because they wouldn’t want me to go to a rival school in conference,” Brown said. “They didn’t seem real interested, so if they weren’t real interested, I wasn’t either.”

MTSU mentioned a walk-on spot, like Troy, but Troy’s offense enticed Brown more.

Brown was more consistent than junior Tanner Jones last week in practice, so coaches picked him to start. He rotated with sophomore wideout Jerrel Jernigan and true freshman Dantavious Parker, with the latter two coming in on run plays.

Brown said rotating plays didn’t bother him. If Parker came in, Brown came out. If Jernigan moved to quarterback, Brown would get a hand signal that told him to line up at receiver.

While at receiver, he took a pitch back from running back DuJuan Harris on a trick play and threw deep for Andrew Davis, but the throw — which offensive coordinator Neal Brown estimated went 60 yards in the air — overshot Davis.

If he had connected on the throw, Davis would have scored and Troy would have gone up 17 late in the first half. Instead, the Trojans punted and FIU later scored to cut the halftime lead to 16-13.

“He was 18-of-28, but he only had three throws that were bad, the big one being the trick play that he missed on,” Neal Brown said. “I was pleased. I thought he did a good job.”

Brown said there were more plays of that nature in the arsenal.

Trojan tales: Jernigan’s effort against FIU (88 rush yards, 131 receiving yards, TD pass, TD catch) earned him Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Week honors. ... Troy will continue to use three quarterbacks against UNT, with Levi Brown, Jernigan and Parker, who was put in the game plan because he’s 30 pounds thicker than Jernigan at 210 pounds. That lessens Jernigan’s chances of running up the middle because “the percentages of (Jernigan) making through the whole year doing that all the time aren’t good,” Neal Brown said.
A fourth quarterback, Jones, could have played but coaches stuck with Levi Brown because of his hot hand. ... Junior center Danny Franks is questionable for UNT Saturday after missing last week’s game with a high ankle sprain. He was supposed to go deer hunting Sunday. “I hope he saw one and I hope he chased it down,” Blakeney said.
Quotable: On Troy’s 0-of-11 third-down percentage against FIU, Neal Brown said, “You’re never happy with it, but two of them were at the end of the game. We were really about 0-for-6. There were six that really mattered. Two of them were negated because of penalties and four of those six were third and 12 or long.
“Of all the things you could have asked about, you pick this one first?”