SELECT GAME NOTES VS. LIUÂ (FULLÂ GAME NOTES PDF) | VIDEO GAME PREVIEW
FRANKIES TIDBITS IN A FLASH
• Saint Francis opens its 109th season in program history and 29th in NCAA Division I with the first-ever meeting with Louisiana-Monroe on Thursday.
• The game will be the sixth game the Red Flash has played against an FBS team under head coach
Chris Villarrial. Saint Francis is 1-4 in its previous five games, including the program's first-ever win against an FBS program with a 23-17 victory against Kent State on September 7, 2024. In addition, the Red Flash had three leads against Akron, but fell to the Zips 30-23 in overtime on September 1, 2022.
• Saint Francis will open a season against an FBS opponent for the fourth time in the last five years. Last year, the team opened the season at Dayton, but ran the gauntlet against Eastern Michigan (2021), Akron (2022), and Western Michigan (2024) before the last season's matchup against the Zips.
• The Saint Francis football team may feel like Green Day and its song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" since the Red Flash will be starting the campaign on the road for the seventh-straight season and the 13th time in Villarrial's 15 seasons. The Loretto program has definitely "walked a lonely road and pretty much the only one that Villarrial has ever known." On the flip side, before Villarrial arrived at Saint Francis, the Red Flash played 10 of its 15 previous season openers at home.
• Since joining the Northeast Conference for football in 1996, the Loretto program is 5-23 in season openers, 4-7 at DeGol Field, and 1-16 on the road. Villarrial is 3-11 overall, 2-0 at home, and 1-11 on the road in the inaugural game of the year. Saint Francis won three of five games from 2015-19 to open the season 1-0. The Red Flash defeated Lehigh 14-13 on August 31, 2019, for the team's only win on the road in the last 28 years.
• "Roads, where we are going, we don't need roads," - Dr. Emmet Brown, Back To The Future. The NEC is primarily a bus league, meaning that teams typically take a bus for road games. For example, Saint Francis will travel to Stonehill on November 22 by bus, which is over 400 miles away from campus and involves a nearly nine-hour bus trip. However, under Villarrial, the team has flown to North Dakota State (2011), Georgia Southern (2013), and Montana (2016). It will be the team's first flight since the Montana trip and the most South the team has been in team history.
• Saint Francis will stay on the road at Buffalo on September 6 for its final game against an FBS program. The Red Flash schedule has a unique twist in that it plays its first three games at Louisiana-Monroe, Buffalo, and CCSU, and then will be in the state of Pennsylvania for 70 straight days. Saint Francis does have two road games in that stretch at Bucknell (September 27) and Duquesne (October 11), but both of those games are in the Keystone State between 90-120 minutes in opposite directions from Loretto. The team will also have five home games in this span.
AN SFU WIN WOULD
• Be the team's second win against an FBS program after the Red Flash defeated Kent State 23-17 on September 7, 2024
• Be the team's first season-opening win since defeating Lehigh 14-13 on August 31, 2019
• Be head coach Chris Villarrial's fourth season-opening victory and second on the road
• Be the team's first win in Louisiana
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ON THIS DATE
• This will be the first time Saint Francis will play on this date
• The earliest the team played on this date prior to this season was August 30, 2014 at Fordham
• The Red Flash has played four games in the month of August after also playing three times on August 31. The team is 1-3 in the month
