Highly-touted Trojan recruit still likely to redshirt

TROY — Mario Addison was one of Troy’s most heralded recruits of the 2008 signing class.

But for now, the redshirt will stay on the defensive end, a junior college transfer. Kenny Mainor suffered a season-ending knee injury against Ohio State, and Brandon Lang left the Oklahoma State game with a slight hyperextension of his right knee, the one he had operated on after last year’s game against the Cowboys when he tore his ACL.

The 6-foot-3, 238-pound Addison excelled at Northeast Mississippi Community College, recording an astonishing 21.5 tackles for loss his sophomore year. The speedster had a 40-yard fumble return for a touchdown in one of Troy’s preseason scrimmages.

“Right now the plans are still to hold him,” defensive ends coach Randy Butler said. “If something were to happen to (starters) Brandon or Cameron (Sheffield) at this point, we would consider it with the majority of the conference schedule ahead of us, but we want to hold him and redshirt him.”

Troy still has eight games on its schedule, including six Sun Belt games. The Trojans (2-2) play at Florida Atlantic, the preseason favorite to win the league, Tuesday at 7 p.m. on ESPN2.

Coaches thought they might have to play Addison the rest of the year when Lang went out of Troy’s 55-24 loss at Oklahoma State Saturday with a knee injury. It was scary for a moment, since Lang missed most of last year, but he was just diagnosed with a slight hyperextension of his knee. When it was determined Lang could play, OSU was up 42-10.

“It was really scary, but he probably could have gone back in and played,” Butler said. “He was upset, he wanted to play, but with the game being the way it was I decided to hold him. (Defensive coordinator) Jeremy (Rowell) agreed and Coach (Larry Blakeney) agreed.

“He was upset with me and I said, ‘That’s fine, be upset with me, but I’m looking at the next eight games.’ Obviously he was disappointed, but I decided to hold him.”

Sophomore John Mark Patrick earned the role of No. 3 defensive end last week in practice and played most of the rest of the way, with freshman Brandon Boudreaux and junior Jeremy Hawkins seeing spot duty.

“The way I was going to work it is that John Mark would play on the run downs and if we felt like we’d gotten them in long-yardage situations, we’d go with Brandon (Boudreaux),” Butler said. “They were having their way with running the football. They had us off balance because they were running it and we couldn’t stop them.”

Patrick’s first meaningful action was in a game where Troy gave up 612 yards of total offense.

“He was kinda like the rest of them,” Butler said. “We got knocked around and we got out of gaps. You’ve got to give them credit — they’re a good offensive football team. They’re going to score a lot of points in that conference.”

Harris set to prove a point: The only Division I-A school that offered sophomore running back DuJuan Harris was Troy, though Harris grew up in Brooksville, Fla., about an hour from South Florida and about three hours from Sun Belt foes FAU and Florida International.

Harris has run for 282 yards in four games — sixth in the league. But the Trojans didn’t run him as much as they did in their most meaningful game so far — the conference opener at Middle Tennessee, when Harris ran for 148 yards and scored three times. He said FAU and FIU sent letters but never followed up with calls.

“I just see it as a missed opportunity for them,” Harris said. “There’s a reason why I’m here, and I looked at all them as missed opportunities to go to the Florida schools. They missed out. If I do good and have a good night, then they missed out.”

And if he’s held in check?

“Then they’ve still got me for another two years,” he said.

Sun Belt leaders: Troy’s Jorrick Calvin leads the conference in kickoff return yards at 26.1 per return. Kicker Sam Glusman is perfect on the season (16-of-16 extra points, 6-of-6 field goals), but as a result of Arkansas State’s 83 points scored on Texas Southern this year, ASU kicker Josh Arauco’s numbers are slightly better (20-of-20 XP, 9-of-9 FG).