DeRuyter working on Fresno State belief system leading up to Ole Miss

Fresno State has not played at Power Five conference level of late, and that was true even when Derek Carr was flinging footballs all over the place. The depth just hasn’t been there and last season USC, Utah and Nebraska proved that rather emphatically. The final scores: 52-13, 59-27 and 55-19.

But there was more to those losses than just personnel issues for a program that trails its Mountain West Conference rivals, and before that trailed its Western Athletic Conference rivals, in a number of infrastructure areas vital to development.

The Bulldogs’ competitiveness in those matchups has been lacking and heading into Saturday’s game at Mississippi – not only a Power Five program but a ranked Power Five program at No. 17 – that is something coach Tim DeRuyter is trying to set right.

“I think the primary thing that you have to do is go in with a belief and an expectation that you can compete,” he said. “I don’t believe I did a good enough job last year having our guys believe that we can win those first three games. I think we’ve got a much different mentality about this group. We’ve got a bunch of guys that really like to compete and we’re going to challenge them that no matter what happens on Saturday we’re going to play our best game of the year.”

Will that be enough? Maybe not. Maybe. The Rebels are a well-established Southeastern Conference program, in the national rankings for an 18th consecutive week, their longest streak since they were ranked for 69 consecutive weeks between 1957 and ’62. They opened their season with a 76-3 victory over an out-gunned Football Championship Subdivision program in Tennessee-Martin, rolling up 11 touchdowns from 10 different players and 662 yards of total offense.

But if the Bulldogs go in like wide-eyed tourists and play indecisively, their fate is sealed.

“Going into the game, certain teams will take themselves out of the competition,” DeRuyter said. “It’s almost a human-nature defense mechanism: ‘I know I’m probably not going to win, so if I don’t invest everything it won’t hurt as much to lose.’ That’s a loser’s mentality.

“I want our guys to invest every single thing. Go in expecting to win and if you lose, it hurts. It’s supposed to. But you know what, that’s part of competing. Maybe the next time you come out and you invest everything and you get a different result. But to not put everything in because you’re afraid of what the public thinks or you’re afraid to lose, that’s a loser’s mentality.”

DeRuyter has seen both sides of that equation, as a player and as a coach.

When he was attending the Air Force Academy way back when, the Falcons four times lined up against Notre Dame, twice in South Bend, Ind., games that they were not expected to win. Notre Dame was down, in the middle of the Gerry Faust years, never surpassing seven wins in any of those seasons and in only one were they ranked. But they still were the Fighting Irish, the Golden Domers, and the Falcons, well, they were not. Yet they won, all four games.

Years later, when DeRuyter was the defensive coordinator at his alma mater, the Falcons took another trip to Notre Dame and they ripped them good. The final score was 41-24, the Fighting Irish generating only 304 yards of offense, losing two fumbles, absorbing six sacks and scoring a fourth-quarter touchdown against the Falcons’ backups that made the score appear somewhat closer.

The Falcons, when DeRuyter was player or an assistant coach, also had victories over Texas, Vanderbilt, Mississippi and Virginia Tech.

It happens. Teams that are not supposed to win do. Just last week, FCS Portland State won at Washington State as a 31-point underdog and FCS South Dakota State won at Kansas.

But the Bulldogs have not beaten a ranked opponent since winning the 2004 MPC Computers Bowl, a 37-34 overtime victory over No. 18 Virginia. They have lost 19 in a row since, the last five under DeRuyter coming by an average of 23.2 points and all double-digit losses.

Against Power Five opponents, the Bulldogs have won 15 of their past 40 games and under DeRuyter they are 2-5, one of those victories a 69-14 wipeout of Colorado in 2012.

And DeRuyter has been massaging that message since fall camp. He had Bob Wieland – who lost both legs in combat during the Vietnam War but went on to set four world records in the bench press and between 1982 and ’86 walked across the country on his hands – speak to the team. On Thursday, that message was driven home after practice. On Friday, it was going to be again.

“I said, ‘Look, I’ve been fortunate. As a player and as a coach, I’ve been a part of a bunch of major upsets knocking off top-25 teams where we had players that didn’t deserve to be on the field if you read what everybody said.’ But what you have to do is go in with a total belief that what you do is all that matters,” DeRuyter said.

“It doesn’t matter what people say. It doesn’t matter how big they are. It doesn’t matter what they’re ranked. It’s about how we play and how we execute that day. That has been our message all week and if our guys believe in it, I believe that we can get this game into the fourth quarter and then anything can happen. It’s all about belief.”

This story was originally published September 11, 2015 at 7:21 PM with the headline "DeRuyter working on Fresno State belief system leading up to Ole Miss."