With a transition year complete, Western Carolina and second-year coach Dennis Wagner want to speed up the building process.
"We've been together for a year, we've had our first official recruiting class.…" Wagner said. "We really feel like this is a year we need to step forward and make a mark and have people start believing in Western football again."
The first step is building depth and numbers.
"We went through the first spring with 55 players, this spring with 75," Wagner said. "It's still not where we want to be, but we'll have our numbers up a year from now, and we're excited about this season."
The second step is being able to finish off games.
The Catamounts won three games last season, but let three other potential wins slip away. They lost to Liberty by a field goal, to Furman by a touchdown and to Georgia Southern in overtime.
"We've got to find a way to close the door on some of these games," Wagner said. "That's been our emphasis all spring and all summer.
"The expectation can't be to keep it close or make it a good game. We went through that early in our season last year with some bonding with our coaches and players, that it wasn't OK just to be close and come back in the locker room after the game and having parents tell the kids how well they played and being satisfied with losing.
"You can't do that. You have to understand that it's about winning and losing, and you have to play your best every week, and if you lose you usually didn't play your best, that somewhere along the way you made a mistake, and in this conference you make a mistake you pay for it."
Wagner said that the mentality in a program that has had just one winning season in the last seven years must change.
"The key for us to get this thing turned around is that somewhere this year we've got to win a game we're not expected to win," Wagner said. "We've got to be able to take a game and take control of it and keep control of it. I really felt like there were two or three games last year we had every opportunity to win and our guys didn't know how to close the door and finish it. Until that happens, it's going to be hard to turn the corner."
The Catamounts also must improve on offense. They averaged 17.6 points and 298 yards a game last season.
They'll pin their hopes on a returning quarterback and a new group of running backs.
Zack Jaynes, who threw for 1,163 yards and 10 touchdowns after sharing time last season as redshirt freshman, will enter this season as the starting quarterback. His top target will be junior Marquell Pittman, who caught 40 passes for 571 yards and four touchdowns.
The Catamounts won't have Quan Warley, who is academically ineligible after rushing for a team-leading 672 yards last season, but will bank on a committee of running backs that includes Nate Harris, Mike Johnson, Jayson Williams and Dion Wilson.
Johnson is a freshman, Wilson a redshirt freshman and Harris a sophomore who has switched from wide receiver. Williams, a former player at Central Florida, started three games before suffering a season-ending knee injury.
On defense, the Catamounts have more experience. Adrian McLeod, a senior linebacker, led the team with 100 tackles last season, including 12 for losses. Senior Chris Collins and junior Mitchell Bell, part of a mostly veteran defensive backfield, were among the team's top four in tackles, and Collins led the Southern Conference in forced fumbles with six.
Gene Singletary, a senior from Kernersville, will anchor the defensive front after starting 12 games last season.
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