Baylor Bears RB Lache Seastrunk: ‘I will win the Heisman in 2013′
Baylor Bears running back Lache Seastrunk (25) run with the ball during the game against the Kansas State Wildcats at Floyd Casey Stadium. (Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports)
Baylor running back Lache Seastrunk is hoping to do his best RGIII impression and become the second Bears player to win the Heisman Trophy in a three-year span.
In fact, not only is Seastrunk hoping to win it, the young man is placing a guarantee on his victory.
“I’m going to win the Heisman. I’m going to win it in 2013,” Seastrunk told the Sporting News this week. “If I don’t, I’m going to get very close. I’m shooting for that goal. I will gladly say it.”
That is quite a bit of confidence from a dude who only just tied a bow around his first college football season.
Seastrunk arrived in Waco, Texas via Eugene, Oregon. He had originally accepted a scholarship to play for the Oregon Ducks, but transferred and sat out a year before finally getting the chance to play in 2012.
The year started slowly for both him and his Bears team, however. Through Baylor’s first seven games, Seastrunk literally did not average more than 26 yards a game.
Hardly Heisman-worthy, wouldn’t you think?
It’s never how you start, however, but rather how you finish that defines the type of season you had. In Seastrunk’s case, the running back finished 2012 very, very well. Through his final five games, Seastrunk averaged 138.6 yards per and scored five times. He broke the 100-yard barrier in four of those five games. In the one game he failed to do so, he scored three times in picking up 91 yards against Oklahoma.
Of course, everyone in Tuscaloosa, Alabama knows when Seastrunk really broke onto the national stage. While his former program and then-undefeated Ducks was in the process of losing to Stanford, Seastrunk was busy gashing another unbeaten in Kansas State. Heisman finalist Collin Klein had by far his worst game of the season as Seastrunk rushed for a career-high 185 yards on 19 carries, averaging 9.7 yards per rush.
His Bears had beaten the No. 1-ranked team in the nation, opening the door for Alabama to get back to the BCS National Championship game.
Not that Seastrunk is worried at all about Bama right now. Instead, the burner is focusing on bringing his abilities to the next level.
“I feel like there’s no back who can do what I do,” he told the Sporting News. “I know I’m the fastest back in the country. I know I’m the best back in the country. Nobody’s going to work harder.”
He will officially be a junior after redshirting at Oregon in 2010 and sitting out his transfer year at Baylor.
If he does work hard and carries his momentum from the final five games of the 2012 season into his junior year with the Bears, the sky’s the limit for him.
And from the looks of it, Lache Seastrunk understands that better than anyone else.
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