History points to Lycoming being a favorite for this weekend’s football game at Alvernia. The Warriors’ success in the Middle Atlantic Conference makes it a keystone of the league. Alvernia has never won a MAC game.

But you won’t find a member of the Warriors counting Saturday’s game with the Golden Wolves as a win. It’s not something they can afford to do. Not when Lycoming enters the game with the same record as Alvernia (1-4). And not when it’s coming off the third-worst loss in Mike Clark’s tenure as the Warriors’ coach.

So you won’t find a lackadaisical Lycoming team going through the motions at practice. You’ll find a focused group trying to avoid the team’s first four-game losing streak since dropping the first five games of the 2007 season.

“I think it’s fair to say we’re hoping to get back on track this week, but they’ve got the same record as us and they’re probably thinking the same thing we are,” Lycoming captain John Schmidt said. “We think we’re the better team, but they’re probably thinking the same thing. So we’re definitely not overlooking anybody.”

“We can’t mail it in. It doesn’t matter where we think we should be or where we could or couldn’t be,” Clark said. “The other day was not good. We did not play well and a lot of that has to do with Delaware Valley. But we still need to be much better, especially on offense.”

In just its second year of existence, Alvernia has won just two games. Both those wins came in the 2018 and 2019 season openers against Gallaudet. The Golden Wolves are 0-11 against MAC opponents and have been outscored by an average of 45-11 in those 11 games. A year ago in its first trip to David Person Field, Alvernia left with a 52-0 loss to Lycoming.

Every conference opponent has scored at least 30 points against Alvernia. Only once in those 11 games did Alvernia manage to score more than 20 points, and that was in a 45-33 loss to Misericordia last year.

Saturday’s game in Reading marks the first time this season Lycoming faces a team that does not have a winning record. Its 1-4 record through the first half of the season has come against teams with a collective 18-5 record, including two teams ranked in the Top 25 nationally and a Wilkes team which is the lone undefeated team remaining in the MAC.

Over the final five games of the Warriors’ season, they’ll face teams which currently have a winning record just twice. Their final five opponents have a combined 9-13 record.

“Are we the favorite this week? I don’t know. We should be ahead of them based on it being their second year,” Clark said. “They’re playing a lot of young guys, but so are we. So we’re still going to have to play well to win.”

Lycoming made progress defensively in losses to Wilkes and King’s and seemed to have regained a swagger which made it one of the top three defenses in the conference a year ago. Then 13th-ranked Delaware Valley put up 41 points last week and the Warriors’ offense was as anemic as it’s ever been.

Clark said after Saturday’s performance there was a lot of honesty when the team reviewed the film Sunday. But the bottom line is it’s a group, especially offensively, which needs to play better. Lycoming has failed to score 20 points in three consecutive games for the first time since the first three games of the 2017 season. Had it scored 20 points a game, it would enter this weekend with three wins as it held both Wilkes (17) and King’s (19) to fewer than 20 points in regulation.

“It’s mental mistakes. It’s personal foul penalties, jumping offsides, hanging on to the ball. Things like that,” Schmidt said. “We can’t have that happen. It’s the little things we have to figure out and fix. And it’s not one person individually, it’s collectively as a team we have to fix things.”

Lycoming enters with the worst offense statistically in the league. It’s 277.8 yards per game is 15 fewer than the next worse offense from Albright, and one of only two teams in the league not to average 300 yards of offense per game. The Warriors’ defense is allowing third-most yards per game and the third-most yards per play.

There are few numbers which would make people feel better about how Lycoming has played through the first five weeks of the season. And that’s exactly why you see a laser focus from the Warriors this week. It’s why they’re not taking Saturday’s game for granted. And it’s why nobody has talked about the bye week.

“I don’t think Sunday was bad (when watching film), it was just very realistic,” Clark said “This is where we need to be and this is what we need to do this week. Hopefully we’ll be able to play a more consistent game.”