CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL | CHAMPIONSHIP GAME TICKETS
NEW ORLEANS — Troy (10-2, 7-1 SBC) is seeking its conference-best seventh Sun Belt football title in Saturday’s Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship Game on its home turf at Veterans Memorial Stadium in Troy, Ala. The game is set for 3:30 p.m. ET/2:30 p.m. CT and will be broadcast nationwide on ESPN.
This will be the Trojans first appearance in the championship game since the event’s inception in 2018, snapping a string of four-straight West Division titles for Louisiana in its first year in the division. Troy made the shift from the East Division to the West Division with the addition of four new members to the Sun Belt ahead of the 2022 campaign.
The matchup with Coastal Carolina (9-2, 6-2 SBC) will be the lone FBS conference championship game featuring a pair of teams with two-or-fewer losses this season.
Troy is in the midst of a nine-game winning streak—its longest since 1999—and is tied with UTSA for the longest streak among teams from non-autonomy conferences.
The Trojans dropped their season-opener at then-No. 21/24 Ole Miss, 28-10, before picking up a 38-17 win over Alabama A&M for the first victory of the Jon Sumrall era in their home opener.
With the eyes of the college football world affixed on the Sun Belt in Week 3, as the College GameDay crew climbed into the Carolina high country for the conference opener between Troy and App State, the Trojans nearly spoiled the Mountaineers party. The game came down to the final play, with App State prevailing on a 53-yard Hail Mary that has been dubbed the second “Miracle on the Mountain.”
The adversity of that moment—falling to 1-2 overall and 0-1 in conference play—brought the Trojans locker room together in their first year under a first-time head coach.
Troy has not lost since, rattling off nine-straight wins.
The run began with the first-ever conference win over Marshall, 16-7; a non-conference victory over Western Kentucky, 34-27; the first-ever conference win over Southern Miss, 27-10; and an 11th-consecutive win over Texas State, 17-14.
A subsequent three-game stretch from Oct. 20-Nov. 12 proved pivotal for the Trojans.
Troy prevailed, 10-6, in a defensive battle on the road at in-state rival South Alabama in front of a crowd of 25,450 on Thursday, Oct. 20, spoiling the first-ever sellout at Hancock Whitney Stadium. The fifth-straight victory in the Battle for the Belt rivalry game proved to be the tiebreaker in punching the Trojans ticket to the Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship over the Jaguars.
Coming off its bye week, Troy scored 23 unanswered points over the final 15:00, capped by a 22-yard touchdown run by sophomore running back Kimani Vidal with five seconds remaining in a 23-17 victory over Louisiana. The Trojans did not score until time expired in the third quarter, overcoming a 17-0 deficit.
The following week, Troy erased a 9-0 halftime deficit in a 10-9 win over Army—a game that drew a program-record sellout crowd of 31,010 to Veterans Memorial Stadium. Senior linebacker Carlton Martial made a career-high 22 tackles in the contest to become the all-time NCAA career record holder.
Since, Troy has registered convincing wins over ULM, 34-16, and Arkansas State, 48-19, behind back-to-back 200-yard rushing days from Vidal.
Junior quarterback Gunnar Watson has completed 181-of-295 passes for 2,387 yards and 10 touchdowns this season—with wide receivers sophomore Tez Johnson (49 Catches, 764 Yards, 4 Touchdowns) and senior RaJae’ Johnson (30 Catches, 538 Yards, 4 Touchdowns) serving as his primary targets.
Vidal (189 Carries, 1,006 Yards, 9 Touchdowns) became the 11th 1,000-yard rusher in Trojans program history—and the 10th different player to do so—amassing 450 of those yards over the final two games of the regular season. He is spelled by senior running back DK Billingsley (125 Carries, 599 Yards, 5 Touchdowns) in the ground game.
The trademark Trojan defense has allowed just 16.8 points per game—eighth in the nation—and 316.4 yards of total offense per game—16th in the nation—to its opponents this season.
Martial leads the way with a team-high 112 tackles, followed by senior safety Craig Slocum Jr. with 89. Sophomore defensive lineman T.J. Jackson (14.5 TFL, 8.0 Sacks) and junior defensive lineman Richard Jibunor (10.0 TFL, 6.5 Sacks) have proven stout on the defensive front.
Junior defensive back Reddy Steward, who ranks fourth on the team with 55 tackles and paces the Trojans with three interceptions, is also a key contributor.
A win Saturday would secure the conference-leading seventh Sun Belt title for the Trojans—the first in the championship game era and the first since 2017. A Troy victory would also snap a string of three-straight one-possession losses to Coastal Carolina and would keep the home team undefeated in the five-year history of the Hercules Tires Sun Belt Football Championship.