GJ Kinne: The next great offensive mind of CFB?

[Helobious 9475]

Some poor P5 program is really going to take a chance on Kinne and get burned horrendously. So far his coaching career has involved inheriting a talented group of players at UIW, then getting them to transfer with him to Texas State. Dude knows nothing about building a winner.

[GJ Winne 166]

Kinda feel like that's a stamp of approval, given your history.

[Herpa Derpa 6103]

21 minutes ago, Helobious said:

Some poor P5 program is really going to take a chance on Kinne and get burned horrendously. So far his coaching career has involved inheriting a talented group of players at UIW, then getting them to transfer with him to Texas State. Dude knows nothing about building a winner.

You make stupid seem smart.

Getting a talented group from UIW to follow him to TXST (and a boatload of other transfers from all over, including the '23 and '24 QBs) resulted in building a winning program.

 

[ClubWhatever 12085]

He didn't seem too upset about the loss in the post game, especially considering bad fundamentals caused one of the turnovers that cost them the game.

[GJ Winne 166]

GJ Kinne continues to build something special in short time at Texas State

In between the mascot riding a motorcycle onto the field and a mariachi break sometime during the second half, there was a football game on Thursday night.

Texas State lost its first game of the season, falling 31-28 at UFCU Stadium to an Arizona State team that was picked to finish last in its first season in the Big 12, but has won three straight to start the season.

It was a battle of the party schools, and it’s clear that, regardless of the result, Texas State head coach GJ Kinne is building something in San Marcos.

“The message afterward was just to stay together,” Kinne said. “We’re going to go win a bunch of ballgames.”

In less than a year and a half, Kinne has turned Texas State from a laughingstock into a sleeping giant.

In three seasons under Everett Withers, the Bobcats failed to win more than three games. 

That was followed by four years with Jake Savaital as the head coach, where the Bobcats took a small step forward by winning four games in back-to-back seasons, but failed to really break through.

Texas State brought in a different kind of coach when they hired Kinne before last season. The son of a former Baylor linebacker and coach built Incarnate Word into the top offensive team in all of college football in his one year in San Antonio.

He brought in 49 new players in his first year, about half of which came from the transfer portal, beat Baylor in Waco in his first-ever game and led Texas State to their first bowl game in school history, where it beat Rice in the First Responders Bowl. 

Thursday night felt like a culmination of everything.

With a Power Conference school coming to San Marcos for a standalone Thursday game on national television, the Bobcats didn’t disappoint.

Thanks to 268 passing yards and four touchdowns by former Sun Belt Player of the Year quarterback Jordan McCloud, Texas State put up 400 yards of total offense in the loss to Arizona State.

The Bobcats built a two-touchdown lead in the first half only to see the Sun Devils storm back with a pair of touchdowns in the final four minutes of the first half to tie things up. 

McCloud was about to get rocked by an incoming Arizona State defender late in the third quarter but stayed composed in the pocket to throw a 44-yard dime to Jaden Williams and reestablish the Texas State lead.

Arizona State forced a pair of fourth-quarter turnovers, and reigning Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week Cam Skattebo rushed for a touchdown and Ian Hershey kicked the game-winning field goal with under three minutes to go.

“When a good team like that, a Big 12 team, comes to your house, and you have an opportunity to capitalize, you’ve got to be able to capitalize,” Kinne said. “Most of the time, we’ve done that. We didn’t get it done and it’s just part of football. 

“We’ll learn from this, we’ll be battle-tested. Sometimes you don’t realize why, but it’ll play itself out.”

Texas State has more than a week to figure out what went wrong in the second half on Thursday before taking on Sam Houston in its final non-conference game on Sept. 28 in Houston.

Until then, the party in San Marcos rolls on.

“I hate it for the kids that we weren’t able to get that win, but I think we earned a lot of respect around the country tonight," Kinne said.

[GJ Winne 166]

Quote

mariachi break sometime during the second half

This was absolutely awesome, btw.  Singer from our mariachi band solo'd during a timeout and just CRUSHED the whole time.  Towards the end as the teams were coming back onto the field, the production person was trying to usher him off, but dude had his eyes locked on the officials w/ the countdown timer at the other end and belted out his song until that thing hit zero.  Dude was straight up money and he had the crowd HYPED as we returned to play.

[deter 313]

Well, well, well. 40-39 .