ANNAPOLIS | Onlookers at Navy practices this year have had a good amount of company standing on the sidelines. And as the season grew older, the number of injured players donning red jerseys seemed to grow every week.
But as the Midshipmen (8-4) prepared Saturday for Wake Forest (7-5) and this week’s EagleBank Bowl at RFK Stadium, they are back to full strength.
“The coaches and I were just talking about it. We’re as healthy as we’ve been in a while,” coach Ken Niumatalolo said. “So we don’t have any excuses this week. We’re healthy and we’re ready to go.”
That includes quarterback Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada, who played his first full game of the season in Navy’s 34-0 rout of Army on Dec. 6. The senior has finally put a lingering hamstring injury behind him and is expected to start against the Demon Deacons.
That makes life easier for Niumatalolo, who has shortened practices to about an hour this week while the Mids take final exams. Kaheaku-Enhada is Navy’s most experienced signal-caller, having played in a triple-option scheme since high school.
His comfort level in the offense is apparent as Navy’s attack is visibly more effective when Kaheaku-Enhada is in the game. Against Army, fullback Eric Kettani and slotback Shun White, the Mids’ top two threats, both eclipsed 100 yards rushing in the same game for the first time all season.
“It’s just that experience of playing in this offense,” White said after the game. “He’s been in tough situations before. He knows what checks to make, he knows how to read the defense.”
It also helps that the Mids and Demon Deacons are familiar with each other. Saturday will be the third time the two have met in the past two seasons. Wake won 44-24 in Annapolis in 2007 and Navy shocked the then No.16 Demon Deacons in Winston Salem, N.C., on Sept. 27.
“From an offensive standpoint for us, it won’t take long to figure out what they’re trying to do, and the same thing on the other side as far as what approach they are trying to take against our defense,” Niumatalolo said. “So we’ll just wait and see what they do.”
Since the Mids don’t have to travel far for their bowl game this year, they have the benefit of practicing at their own facilities and using their own media center. They don’t have the burden of hauling any equipment around the country, including portable video equipment and laptops for film study, which can be the most cumbersome. These were all issues that Niumatalolo had to deal with in his first week as coach last year, when Navy was preparing for the Poinsettia Bowl in San Diego.
This week, Niumatalolo expects to be able to run more-productive practices. Because he shortened them to give the players more time to study, he said the coaching staff will map out each one so they can maximize their time.
“We did the same thing last year, and we almost beat Utah, who is going to a BCS Bowl game [this year],” Niumatalolo said. “The bottom line is, we have to execute and the one thing we learned is we gotta make sure to be as pad-ready as we can. Fortunately for us, we just played [on Dec. 6] so hopefully we won’t be as rusty.”
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