Who are the Deleware State Hornets?

Submitted by the_big_house 500th on

The Delaware State University Hornets football team is currently led by head coach Al Lavan and play at 7,193-seat Alumni Stadium located in Dover, Delaware. The facility opened in 1957 as a multi-purpose for football, and track and field. The Hornets compete in Division I FCS, and are full-members of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. They are a four-time conference champion and made their first-ever playoff appearance in 2007.A

After 2003's 1-10 debacle, Delaware State hired Alton "Al" Lavan as their new head football coach with the task of rebuilding the program once again. When Lavan was hired as head coach of the Hornets in January 2004, he promised to bring championship football back to Delaware State.In 2007, the promise became reality.

Last season, he led the Hornets to a school-record 10 wins, their first Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) championship since 1991 and first ever appearance in the NCAA playoffs. In addition, the 2007 Hornets were ranked as high as No. 10 in the weekly SportsNetwork Football Championship Subdivision poll and were No. 15 in the final poll.

david from wyoming

October 12th, 2009 at 5:27 PM ^

Unless you wrote the wikipedia article this was ripped directly from, you should be pretty ashamed. Just because it is part of the public domain doesn't mean you should still cite.

Sgt. Wolverine

October 12th, 2009 at 5:39 PM ^

Unfortunately, this is the way of the internet. There are some responsible people, but there are many who aren't think it doesn't matter where online content comes from. Even if -- or especially if -- something is free, it's important to recognize the source of the content.

BlueinLansing

October 12th, 2009 at 6:02 PM ^

DSU is 1-3 this year

Florida A&M 12-21, the Rattlers are 4-0 vs teams not named Miami
Deleware 17-27, the Bluehens are 4-2
Hampton 21-6, the Pirates are 3-2
Bethune-Cookman 7-9, BC is now 1-4 on the year

DSU played Kent State in both 2007 and 2008, losing 38-7 and 24-3. Those are two of Kent's 7 wins over these two seasons.

You can link their team stats here
http://www.dsuhornets.com/fls/12900/statistics/football2009/teamcume.htm

MartinHD

October 12th, 2009 at 6:04 PM ^

This past Saturday, Delaware State played in front of a home crowd of 3,873 and lost to Bethune-Cookman (1-4, 1-3) by a score of 9-7. The 7 points that the hornets scored resulted from a kickoff return to BC's 2 yard line. DSU managed a total of 166 yards of offense in the game.

HartAttack20

October 12th, 2009 at 7:08 PM ^

This game is going to be way worse than I thought before I had any idea how good they were. This could be bad. I'm sure the players are pumped, though, since they get to play in the big house. That's the only thing that makes me not feel bad about it. At least we can see the 2nd string play for a while.

MichiganStudent

October 12th, 2009 at 8:14 PM ^

I bet we see everyone who will not be red shirted or has the opportunity to red shirt. The vast majority of the roster should see playing time this weekend.

I know that sounds bad, but I just do not see how we do not win this game by at least 40 points. We could see some records being broken.

Brother Mouzone

October 12th, 2009 at 7:02 PM ^

Is that the new nickname of the team... the fucking terribles???

What I would like to know is if they are bringing their band so I can know what the over/under will be on the MMB threads.

I'd love to play FAMU just for their half time show at the Big House....

JustGoBlue

October 12th, 2009 at 10:51 PM ^

DSU is bringing their band. Due to too much free time, I youtube'd the DSU band.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqvAeBx-5-U&feature=PlayList&p=770FF8842…

The video isn't much, but the comments are pretty funny. Just for a taste, my favorite one is:

"I KNOW MICHIGAN WILL SMASH THEM, last year UD beat them 44-7, UD could have a chance to beat Michighan, theyve beatin big teams like Navy and Mayland before but Del State has no chance"

imablue

October 12th, 2009 at 6:51 PM ^

They're going to be awe struck walking into the Big House,
holy sh!t 7,193!. This is a good week to rest some banged up
players.
How about a *"Courtesy of Wikipedia"? I don't know what the
big deal is, but that ought to cover it.

Don

October 12th, 2009 at 6:51 PM ^

There is absolutely no upside, other than the cheap win, and that's as much of an achievement as having sex with a drunken, desperate prostitute. I just hope that all the starters and backups are on the bench before the second quarter is very old.

HartAttack20

October 12th, 2009 at 7:11 PM ^

always upside to a game. This can give Denard a chance to work on his game. Get used to making some reads and throwing the ball. The defense can also use this as a nice warmup for PSU. This is basically an extended and competitive practice. Is there no upside in practice?

jcgold

October 12th, 2009 at 7:45 PM ^

Does anyone know what kind of offense they run? What kind of defense they run? Who is their go-to player? Other than the fact that they are 1-3 and lost to Bethune-Cookman this past weekend in front of 3,000+, do we know anything about this team?

BlueinLansing

October 12th, 2009 at 7:53 PM ^

attendance from all games in 2008 was 54,576.

The largest crowd DSU has played in front of in the last three seasons was 20,585 at Deleware this season.

......or about 8 1/2 sections of Michigan Stadium.

death_roh

October 12th, 2009 at 8:06 PM ^

dsu have a similar uniform to michigans. I know flacco went there and seem to rember them having the same helmet as us and colors. Only differnce was they had a different shad of blue.

MichiganStudent

October 12th, 2009 at 8:20 PM ^

Actually you both are wrong. Flacco went to Delaware, not Delaware State. Delaware has a similar color scheme and has the winged helmets, they look like little Michigan.

TATEisGREATyo

October 12th, 2009 at 8:09 PM ^

no you are thinking of Delaware.^^^

"The Hornets have not been shut out in 57 straight games."

Hopefully we end this. Otherwise we suck at life.

the_big_house 500th

October 12th, 2009 at 11:22 PM ^

I'm shocked that this team was this good when reading the info about them. I really thought this was some community college like knock around team but these guys appearantly mean business when it comes to football especially in 2007. Might not be a blow out but I'm very sure and hope it will be.

Maize and Blue…

October 12th, 2009 at 8:16 PM ^

Offensively in 4 games they average 14.3 points and 265 yards/game split roughly 154 passing and 111 rushing with a TOP of 27 minutes.
Defensively in 4 games they give up 15.8 points and 392 yads/game roughly 190 passing and 200 rushing. They have 5 INTs with 2 being pick 6s according to Yahoo sports.

Njia

October 12th, 2009 at 8:13 PM ^

To get UM on their schedule? I read an article (SI or ESPN) that suggested their AD took some heat for forfeiting a league game in favor of the payout from playing at Michigan. I can well imagine that this one game will mean more to their school's financial well-being than all of their other games combined.

jcgold

October 12th, 2009 at 9:06 PM ^

They forfeited their conference game against NC A+T. However, they were in the middle of a transition at AD, and signed the deal without double checking their schedule. While their new AD was in favor of breaking the contract, they simply could not afford the buyout, which is probably about $200,000. Thus, they forfeited a conference game to play us.

Anonymosity

October 12th, 2009 at 9:49 PM ^

Keeping in mind such things as Appalachian State, Toledo, and the fact that Michigan might be starting a total wildcard at quarterback on Saturday, I'm not going to assume anything about this game until the clock reads 0:00 in the fourth quarter...

michman79

October 12th, 2009 at 10:00 PM ^

I cannot believe this post attracted the Blog gestapo. There is really no need to cite your sources on an innocent blog like this. Seriously, go search for spelling mistakes if you want to police. Or, go compile some meaningless statistical analysis that offers no insight into the future and steals past data from (let me clear my throat) unnamed internet sources (oh wait, those stats are public knowledge and don't need to be cited?). Come on, it's a blog.