The first game in the “KentGRIT” era did not produce the best result.

“Not the start we wanted, but I’m proud of the way the team competed in the first half,” coach Kenni Burns said. “It’s one game, and now it is on us to come back and respond. We’re a better football team than what showed out there today.”

The Kent State football team dropped the season’s first game to the University of Central Florida 56-6.

This is the first time an opponent has scored 50 or more points against KSU since the University of Wyoming tailed 52 points in the 2021 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. 

“One thing I will say about the offense is that they continued to fight till the end, and they’ll get better,” Burns said. “That’s a really good football team, but we’ll be okay. I think we have a good quarterback, a really good front, a really good running back, and the defensive line is one of the best I’ve seen.”

Burns said this experience leading a team felt “different.”

“I’m not involved in just the offense anymore, and my eyes are looking at every aspect of the game,” he said. “This was a learning experience for me as a head coach.”

As the team broke in 11 new starters on the offensive side of the ball, Burns said it went “as expected.”

“I knew there was going to be some ups and downs throughout our first game,” he said. “They just have to continue getting reps and playing together.”

The KSU defense allowed 723 total yards throughout the duration of the game, allowing 8.9 yards per play on average.

The Flashes produced 240 total yards, averaging 3.5 yards per play.

Knight-mare game

UCF started the game with two touchdowns in their first two drives.

The first came off a 9-yard pass from quarterback John Rhys Plumlee to wide receiver Xavier Townsend. The second touchdown came off a 17-yard rush from Plumlee to make the score 14-0.

Kent State would get on the board on the following drive as junior kicker Andrew Glass converted a 45-yard field goal.

The Knights were up 14-3 at the end of the first quarter.

UCF would score 28 unanswered points through two rushing touchdowns and two touchdown passes. 

Glass would make his second field goal of the night, a 43-yarder, making the score 42-6.

UCF scored two more rushing touchdowns in the fourth quarter, finalizing the score at 56-6.

Plumlee was efficient for UCF, throwing for 281 yards and three touchdowns while completing 22 of his 30 pass attempts. He also ran for 90 yards and a score.

Plumlee made some mistakes, though.

In the first quarter, sophomore defensive linemen Oliver Billotte and senior defensive linemen CJ West forced Plumlee into a fumble, which KSU recovered.

He also threw two interceptions on the night, one coming from graduate student cornerback DJ Miller in the second quarter and the other from graduate student linebacker Nicholas Giacolone in the fourth quarter.

“We know we need to get some turnovers, and we say, ‘if you win the turnover battle, you win the broken tackle battle, and if you win the explosive play battle, you have a 78% chance of winning,’” Burns said. “We won the turnover battle, but we lost the other two, so we have to emphasize those two things to get better.”

UCF had 389 rushing yards in the game, with 274 coming from running back Johnny Richardson, Plumlee and Harvey.

The team scored on eight of their 12 drives — UCF punted one time and had three turnovers but more than doubled Kent State’s 15 first downs with its own 33.

For Kent State, Purdue transfer quarterback Michael Alaimo played his first game for the Flashes.

He completed 12 of his 31 passes, throwing for 145 yards and one interception, and added 23 yards rushing.

He was the team’s second-leading rusher, behind sophomore running back Gavin Garcia, who ran for 45 yards on 18 attempts, a 2.5 yard per rush average.

The team ran for a total of 95 yards for the game.

“It was uphill for the running backs,” Burns said. “We probably didn’t give them enough holes and enough seams to get things going. The more the line gets better, the more they’ll get better.”

This season, there were no returning players to the offensive line.

“There are five new guys playing together with a true freshman center,” Burns said. “They’re going to get better as we keep moving forward. There are a lot of guys that played their first football today. If they learn from this, these guys will grow quickly.”

Alaimo was replaced in the fourth quarter by sophomore quarterback Tommy Ulatowski.

Despite Burns cutting Alaimo’s night short, he has “no worries at all about Mike.”

“They threw some different looks at us in the second quarter that may have been tricky for him, and he threw a couple of passes he shouldn’t have, but he’s a good player – he’s going to learn and get better. Mike kept fighting through the whole thing.”

Looking ahead

Burns noted that the team suffered no major injuries in the game.

Following the loss, KSU will travel to Fayetteville, Arkansas, to take on the Razorbacks on Saturday, Sept. 9.

This will be the first time in program history that Kent State will play Arkansas.

Kickoff will be at 4 p.m.

Burns hopes the team will “grow quickly” ahead of its next game.

“That’s what the whole program is about – growing, responding, keeping our integrity, and doing it together,” he said. “We’re going to keep doing that in good times and in hard times, and the guys will respond. I have no doubt in my mind.”

John Hilber is a reporter. Contact him at [email protected].