UAB Drops Akron To Run Record To 2-1
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - September 14, 2025
UAB took care of experiencing the highs and lows of a football game on the first two plays of Saturday night’s 31-28 win over Akron in a non-conference game at Protective Stadium.
Solomon Beebe provided the first moment when he took the opening kickoff and sped 96 yards for a touchdown. With eleven seconds elapsed on the clock, the Blazers had their first lead. Eleven seconds later that changed. Akron, which hadn’t scored a point in eight quarters this season coming into the game, scored on its opening play of the game when quarterback Ben Finley found Israel Polk on a deep post pattern. Cornerback Roy Williams fell after Polk made the catch and Polk ran untouched into the end zone.
“What have we talked about every single day since January?” Dilfer said. “Reset and respond. Bad things are going to happen. I mean, literally I have found a million ways, it feels like, to say the same thing over and over again. Bad stuff happens in football and these people are so delusional to think that everything's gonna go well. Football, at its best level with the best players in the world, is who overcomes adversity the best.”
Actually, it was Akron facing that first on a play that Beebe said he knew was coming.
“I ain't gonna lie, before the play even happened, before the game even started, I told myself I’m going to take it back,” Beebe said.
Dilfer cut him off before he continued with the answer.
“You didn’t tell me that, I would have slept a lot better if I knew,” Dilfer said.
Beebe continued after sharing a laugh with Dilfer.
“I saw the hole, I saw it open up like we’ve drawn it up in practice and just made the best of it,” Beebe said.
It didn’t take long for the Blazers to experience an opposite feeling with the long touchdown pass by the Zips.
“We called a blitz on the first series, actually a really good call,” Dilfer said. “We lost leverage, they made a play, we didn’t. That’s kind of been the story of the bad plays this season. Missed opportunities when they’re there and other teams capitalize on their opportunities.”
A few hours later, the Blazers were celebrating a win that wasn’t as pretty as expected.
“I think it was appropriate,” Dilfer said of his team’s reaction afterward. “I think we're really excited. There's 60-something college football teams that lost today. We're not one of them. We know it's hard to win, but there's some like ‘Gosh, we're so much better than that in the long run.’ So that's good. I mean, it's high expectations. We have players that care a lot. You know, we have players that don't want to sputter offensively, that don't want to give up that many points defensively. But we've got to take the appropriate measures during the week of practice and a game to fix it so it doesn't keep happening.”
WHAT IT MEANS: It was far from flawless but UAB moves on with a 2-1 record, marking the first time the Blazers have a winning record under Dilfer at any point after the second game of the season.
WHEN THE GAME TURNED: Akron was never out of the game but a sequence in the second quarter put UAB in control. It began with a critical mistake when Jalen Kitna was hit while trying to throw on what to that point was a promising drive. The ball caromed into the hands of Akron linebacker Markus Boswell, who ran 44 yards to the UAB 31-yard line before being run down by Isaiah Jacobs. UAB allowed one first down before stiffening and forced a field goal attempt after back-to-back tackles for loss by Jalen Cheek and Eamon Smalls. Akron missed the field goal. UAB responded with a 62-yard drive that ended with a 5-yard touchdown pass from Kitna to Corri Milliner with 47 seconds left in the half. That allowed UAB to take a 31-20 lead into halftime.
WHY UAB WON: The offense and special teams provided the points in the first half and the defense came up with some key stops after halftime.
WHAT ARE THE KEY STATS: Jalen Kitna and the passing game carried the offense. Kitna was 30-of-45 for 341 yards with two touchowns and an interception. Corri Milliner and Iverson Hooks, once again, handled a large chunk of the receiving production with 11 catches on 18 targets. But the Blazers also got seven other players involved in the passing game. There was tight end production with J.C. Sivley and Elijah Lagg combining on four catches for 37 yards and Brandon Hawkins Jr. had a production with five catches on five targets for 59 yards with a long reception of 24 yards. What hurt the offense, though, was a sluggish run game. The Blazers top three running backs – Jevon Jackson, Solomon Beebe and Isaiah Jacobs – had a combined 90 yards on 24 carries. Beebe finished the game with 190 all-purpose yards, including 154 on kickoff returns.
WHO GETS THE GAME BALLS: It may sound strange when one of the worst offenses in the country outgained the Blazers, 444-422, but the UAB defense deserves mention here for a couple of late game stops. Akron had two late-game opportunities to either tie the game or take the lead. The first ended on back-to-back sacks by J’Quan Mason and Eli Ennis. The second ended after a second down sack by Chris Burge and back-to-back pass breakups by Tamarion Crumpley and Perry Fisher. Again, it wasn’t a good night overall by the defense but they did have some success in the second half for the second consecutive week. Linebacker Tylan McNichols had a team-best eight tackles with one tackle for loss and Burge had seven tackles, 1.5 sacks and a quarterback hurry.
WHAT DID COACH DILFER SAY IN HIS POSTGAME PRESS CONFERENCE:
Opening statement: “Yeah, I'm excited to get the win. I don't think we played our best football, but I think you gotta learn how to win the games and we were able to do that. Thought the defense showed up big time in the second half when we were sputtering offensively and got enough stops to get the victory. I've said it the whole time, this team has to keep getting better every single week. I'm glad that we got the win as we're trying to improve and we've got the opportunity this week to go back to work and become significantly better than we were the first three games of the season.
On the second half struggles by the offense once again: “Really, we just haven’t been able to run the ball consistently. And then tonight we dropped balls. I think we ended up with six or seven drops. So it's hard to sustain drives when you're not dominating the line of scrimmage and then you're dropping conversion plays. Less plays, less opportunities for yards, less points. We got to fix it, but we had a really good week of practice. We talked all week long about playing better in the second half, staying in the moment, like just for execution on a lot of plays.”
On defense struggling in first half of games: “We just haven’t played well. I mean, again, I don't know how many ways I can say it. We've got to keep getting better. I mean, I'll just keep saying it. I think we're a team that's growing daily. I knew going into the season that we're going to have to get better every single week.”
On Jalen Kitna: “Yeah, I thought he played pretty darn well. The one weird interception, I don't know. I don't know what happened to be honest with you, it was a rough play. But besides that, I thought he managed the chaos really well. There's some really ugly things that went on, a lot of ebbs and flows, a lot of drops again. And sometimes quarterbacks can get frustrated, he didn't get frustrated with them. He took care of the football when things weren't there, made good decisions. So, I mean, it could have been significantly better. But I thought his attitude, his emotions, his level headness really allowed us not to completely melt down. We were trying to melt down, and he kept us from melting down. We won this game because of the situation that we practice often, two-minute offense and defense. We have battles on Tuesdays and they’re brutal. Defense wins some, offense wins some, but we're prepared for them. We have the two-minute drive in the first half that we hit a touchdown on and then get a stop in a two-minute Mayday situation at the end of the game to get us the win. So I'm proud that we're able to carry over something from practice that, that ultimately won the game.”
On Nate Rogers and his touchdown run: “Nate's a dynamic player. We have a boat load of quarterbacks that can really play. And we're trying to find ways to use them all. Nate's an explosive athlete can really throw too. He's got a great future here. And there's some quarterback runs that we have up every week and RPOs and passes with other quarterbacks. That was a run that I thought looked good into the boundary and I thought Nate did a great job finishing.”
On special teams: “It’s awesome. I think anytime we really take a lot of pride in our special teams and a lot of that pride comes when (Beebe) is returning the football. Your kickoff return teams, your punt return teams are two that can be really dynamic if you believe in your returners. This group really believes in Solomon, really believes in Strap (Iverson Hooks) in the punt game. So I think, you know, you block harder, you care about it more, you work harder in practice. We've been really good on teams under John Jones. It's an area we think we can even be better at.”
On getting a lot of players involved in passing game: “We like our receiver group, we like them all. There's guys that didn't get the ball that we're trying to get the ball to as well. Just imagine if we would have caught those seven balls, how many more plays we would have. I am disappointed about 422 yards on 76 plays. I mean, that should have been 90 plays for 600 yards if we execute. As we execute better, we'll get more people involved. We want to use them all. We believe that we've recruited a really good group of skilled players. They want to eat. I don't blame them. They work hard in practice. I've always believed that the best offense is spread the ball around. They don't just target certain players. But we need more plays. Our expectation is 90 plays a game and 600 yards. We fell short of that and a lot of it is just because we didn't execute well. We execute better, more guys would touch the ball.
On Akron pressure in passing game: “Well, they just beat us up front a few times. And I didn't want to throw it 45 times. We wanted to run it 50 times. The game kind of changed on us with our inability to be consistent in the run game. Anytime you throw at that many times, there's gonna be quarterback pressures. I thought Jalen did a really good job of securing the football. I didn't see the one live, the last sack. The guy came off the edge, I saw it on my ipad after. But that was a really good play holding onto the football against somewhat of a free runner. He understands that if we're gonna put the ball in his hands that many times, he's got to protect the football.”
WHERE IS UAB’S NEXT ASSIGNMENT: UAB travels to play a Tennessee team that will be mad after losing an overtime heartbreaker to Georgia. The game kicks off at 11:45 a.m. CST.