Bruce Barnum entered his first head coaching gig with a rare circumstance: three different quarterbacks on his 2015 Portland State roster with starting experience.
Barnum, who spent five seasons at Nigel Burton’s offensive coordinator before taking over on an interim basis in November, coached Kieran McDonagh during a standout freshman season in 2012. Midway through the following season, Barnum benched McDonagh in favor of Collin Ramirez. In 2014, redshirt freshman Josh Kraght saw time as the starter under center in relief of McDonagh. Paris Penn also earned reps as a sophomore.
Alex Kuresa leads Portland State in celebration after a 24-17 win over Washington State/by PSU Athletics
As Portland State enters its second postseason appearance in its Division I era, none of the three quarterbacks have been the man at the helm. Instead, the unassuming leader who randomly popped up on film one evening will be at the controls for the Vikings on Saturday.
Barnum, the Big Sky Conference Coach of the Year, wasn’t on the lookout for a quarterback when he first took the head job. But Alex Kuresa, the quarterback Barnum stumbled upon, has been a key cog in one of the most successful seasons in PSU history. The Big Sky Newcomer of the Year led the Vikings to a pair of wins over FBS opponents as well as five ranked FCS foes. Portland State earned the No. 6 seed and a first-round bye in the FCS playoffs. PSU will host Northern Iowa of the Missouri Valley Conference on Saturday at Providence Park.
“Now you start looking at the thing because we are 11 games into it but there was some tough decisions made there at quarterback early on,” Barnum said. “We lucked out and got him at Portland State University. He wanted to play quarterback. I thank the Jesus that other people wanted to play other positions than quarterback at a position I didn’t think we were that bad at. But I didn’t like some things that happened the year before. And after watching him play, video killed the radio star.”
PSU quarterback Alex Kuresa/by Brooks Nuanez
Barnum and new offensive coordinator Steve Cooper were watching film on a tight end from Snow Junior College — “I need about 42 tight ends for this offense,” Barnum said — when Kuresa popped onto the screen. The 6-foot, 190-pound native of Millville, Utah once played wide receiver at BYU. Despite lacking prototype size, Barnum remembers thinking Kuresa’s highlight film was the longest he has ever seen.
“I said to Steve, ‘We have to get this kid on our football team,” Barnum said.
After a short recruitment, Kuresa had to take care of a few obligations, namely marrying former Snow Junior College point guard Madison Aulai Roe in December. The couple has a newborn daughter. Kuresa joined the Vikings in time for spring ball and plunged right into the quarterback competition.
McDonagh was the veteran in the competition. He became the first quarterback to start as a freshman since the 1950s. His rookie year, he threw for 2,187 yards and 14 touchdowns and rushed for 406 yards and nine touchdowns. He finished eighth in the voting for the Jerry Rice Award, given to the FCS’ top freshman. In 2013, he lost his starting role to Ramirez with three games to play in the season. In 2014, McDonagh was the starter for the first nine games before giving way to Kraght. He threw 41 touchdowns and 37 interceptions in his career.
Penn was the athlete, a shifty runner who rushed for 112 yards and two touchdowns against Oregon State in 2014. Penn would miss all but five games in his sophomore season due to a reoccurring shoulder injury.
PSU quarterback Alex Kuresa/by Troy Wayrynen
Kraght was the wildcard, a small yet slippery player who proved to be a productive dual threat in PSU’s 29-22 loss at Montana State.
Kuresa was the new guy, an athletic junior with a good skill set from a good pedigree. He was the 2010 Utah Gatorade Player of the Year at Mountain Crest High. In his prep career, he threw for 10,951 yards and 101 touchdowns, each Utah records still. He threw for 2,374 yards and 25 touchdowns and rushed for 592 yards and eight touchdowns last season at Snow JC in Ephraim, Utah. Kuresa said his main concern upon joining the Vikings was to learn Barnum’s powerful zone running game filled with option elements, all the while not trying to step on any toes.
“It can be tough being a new guy,” Kuresa said. “You have to develop a balance between falling in place and being a new guy and still trying to be a leader as a quarterback. It can be hard to find that balance and not overstep boundaries and at the same time to develop yourself as a leader. I felt that was my biggest challenge coming into the season.”
Barnum didn’t quite know what he had in Kuresa at first but acknowledged “he’s a dude in my mind” in an interview in May at the end of spring drills. When Barnum began to tally the votes for team captain, Kuresa’s name garnered the most recognition.
PSU quarterback Alex Kuresa/by Brooks Nuanez
“I went back through them, counted ‘em again. Yup, it was him,” Barnum said. “He earns captain and then he had to earn the starting spot because that wasn’t sealed yet. He was in a system where he was playing catch up. He took it over. He led not just our offense but our team and now he has us in the playoffs.”
Penn moved to “utility quarterback”, a position created by Barnum to get the athlete on the field. He has 394 yards from scrimmage and five total touchdowns. Kraght moved to slot wide receiver and has 14 catches for 193 yards and a touchdown this season. McDonagh carved out a “utility fullback” role and has played in certain packages. His touchdown pass on a fullback pass proved to be the game-winning score in a one-point win over Southern Utah.
Kuresa always kept his quarterback mentality even during two years of playing wide receiver in Provo. Once he gained a grasp of his new offensive scheme, he began to get a feel for his teammates. His ability as a field general was on full display during a 14-play, 69-yard drive capped by a go-ahead touchdown with 2:19 to play to secure a 24-17 upset of Washington State.
“His leadership is very special,” PSU senior running back David Jones said. “Everyone was in tune and everyone was in agreement that he should be our captain. Especially him being our quarterback, he is the captain of the ship.”
PSU put a 34-14 whipping on No. 23 Idaho State in Pocatello and the momentum of the season took off. The Vikings bounced back from a home loss to North Dakota with a 66-7 lambasting of North Texas, marking the largest defeat by an FCS team of an FBS opponent. Down the stretch, the Vikings swept the Montana schools, beat eventual league champion Southern Utah by a point and beat rival Eastern Washington 34-31 two weeks ago. Kuresa’s leadership and production played a key role.
PSU quarterback Alex Kuresa/by Ryan Vance
“I was new to the program, new to the area but I’m not new to being a quarterback trying to be the leader of a team,” Kuresa said. “That’s something that’s not foreign to me. I think that comes natural to me. I just had to do it over again. I was new at my junior college, new at BYU, new at my high school at one point so it wasn’t new. I just had to learn the personalities of everyone else and how I fit in with everyone else. I had to figure out how to rally myself and the guys around me to be successful.”
Portland State is knocking on the door of its best season since joining Division I in 1996. The Vikings lost in the Division II national title game in 1987 and 1988 but this season’s win total is the best since joining the Big Sky Conference. Saturday will mark the first FCS playoff game ever in Portland. A team picked to finish 12th in the Big Sky led by an accidentally recruited quarterback will try to continue one of most surprising and successful runs in recent memory.
“I don’t think we have an underdog mentality,” Kuresa said. “I know there are a lot of guys who play with a chip on their shoulder but at the end of the day, we are not coming in here concerned about being the underdog and trying to prove everybody wrong. I think we are more concerned with trying to prove ourselves right. We’ve all been around the whole off-season and we’ve seen the work that has been put in and we know what we are capable of. We saw our potential and that was our goal: to go out and reach our potential. We are a great football team with some outstanding accomplishments but we are not done yet.”
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