SAN MARCOS — Texas State and Baylor will open the season Saturday in Waco with a duel between vastly different coaches.
G.J. Kinne is in his first season with the Bobcats after leading the nation in scoring his lone season at Incarnate Word in 2022. The second-youngest coach in the nation (34) brings a youthful staff, a 53-man signing class with 39 transfers and a fast-paced offense that he promises will “light up the scoreboard.”
“The tempo they play — big, wide splits so the receivers will be way outside the hash closer to the sidelines,” Baylor coach Dave Aranda said at his weekly press conference. “And they run gap schemes, so they’ll have 500-something pounds line up (to the right), but they’ll pull (to the left). With it being so spread out, if there is a miss-fit or anything like that, then (the ball is) out.”
Aranda, in his fourth season with the Bears, is a defensive tactician looking to bounce back from a dropoff last year. He led the Bears to a Big 12 championship in 2021 and was named conference coach of the year after a 12-2 season. Baylor didn’t allow any of its opponents to score more than 30 points in 2021.
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That changed in 2022, as the Bears finished seventh in the conference and had a 6-7 record. After holding their first four opponents under 30 points last year, they allowed six of the last eight to score 30 or more, including a 31-3 loss to Kansas State and a 30-15 defeat by Air Force.
“I don’t know exactly how they are going to attack us,” Kinne said. “They’ve shown a couple different looks. We feel pretty confident with what we are going to get. I think they feel really good about their front seven. Their defensive line is long. They’re not as experienced on the back end.
“We’ll see how they come to attack us. Good thing about our offense is you figure out pretty quickly how they are going to try to stop you. We are a little bit unique with our splits and the way we do things and the tempo. We’ll see their plan of attack and counter that as best as possible.”
While offense is Kinne’s calling card and defense is Aranda’s, they are respecting each other’s ability on the opposite sides of the ball. Kinne commended running back Richard Reese and called Blake Shapen a “good quarterback.” Aranda expressed some concern with facing the 4-2-5 man coverage that is expected from the Bobcats.
Texas State is “a really talented and upgraded squad,” Aranda said.“Defensively, with all the blitzes and the aggressiveness they play with, and just the man coverage that they play — I look at some of the struggles we had with man (coverage) last year and how that’s going to be right up in our face this year.”
The Bobcats will need more than strong man coverage to overcome a Bears team that’s favored to win by 27. Texas State is 0-9 all-time against Baylor with recent losses in San Marcos in 2021 (29-20) and in Waco last year (42-7).
Kinne is taking over a Texas State program that hasn’t won more than four games in a season since 2014 (7-5). He wants his team focused, but he’s hoping Baylor is distracted enough by bigger opponents to underestimate the Bobcats.
“They’ve got a big-time game next week,” Kinne said. “They play Utah or something like that. Hopefully they are kind of looking ahead and trying to get prepared for those guys.”
Saturday’s game
Texas State at Baylor, 6 p.m., Big 12/ESPN+
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas State to open 2023 football season at Baylor
