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Opponent: Truman State
Time: Thursday, August 30th; 6:00 PM
Location: Plaster Stadium; Bolivar, Missouri

Bolivar, Mo. - The SBU Bearcats enter 2012 coming off their first back to back to back winning seasons in the history of the program. Sixth year coach Keith Allen's squad is excited to lead the Bearcats into uncharted territory this season as the Bearcats move back into the MIAA in search of an MIAA championship.

“We are excited about the opportunity to play in the best NCAA Division II conference in the nation,” Coach Allen commented. “We are in a great conference, a true 'football' conference, and I am excited about being able to measure our team against everyone in the conference on a weekly basis. We may not have the depth some of the other teams in our conference have, but I feel that our kids are bought in and working hard to compete and show our opponent we belong in the MIAA. What else excites me is that no one in our conference expects anything from us, We are preseason ranked 13th in the MIAA. Our kids understand that we haven't done anything yet to deserve to be ranked any better than that. They know that we have to go out and work every day to deserve to change that perception.”

The Bearcats look poised to have their most successful MIAA conference record in the history of the program. After coming off of back-to-back-to-back winning seasons for the first time in school history, the Bearcats will use that momentum to be continually competitive in a tough MIAA conference.

The Coaches and the All-Time Series

Keith Allen has already engineered a significant turnaround at SBU, moving the 'Cats from 0-11 his first year as interim coach, to 5-6 in 2008, to the winning record of 6-5 in 2009, another winning record of 7-4 in 2010, and completed a third consecutive winning season in 2011 with a 6-5 record. Allen served as defensive and recruiting coordinator before being named SBU head coach in 2007. His past coaching experience has included stops at San Jose State, Quincy, TCU and Oklahoma.

Gregg Nesbitt is in his third season at Truman State and holds a career record of 8-14.

Truman State leads the all-time series against the Bearcats, 19-3. Truman State won the last meeting 24-8 at Southwest Baptist in 2011.

Scouting the Bulldogs

In 2011 Truman was 4-7 overall, and 2-7 in conference play. The Bulldogs lost many key players including starting QB J.B. Clark, leading rusher Harnish Ayora, and leading receiver Anthony Brown. The Bulldogs will turn Conrad Schottel, who played 7 games - starting 1 in 2011, to lead their offense from the quarterback position.