By BRENT STUBBS

Chief Sports Editor

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

THE Liberty Flames, which will feature two Bahamian female athletes on their track and field team, will bring its men’s football team to compete in the Bahamas Bowl.

Representing Conference USA, the Flames, with an 8-3 win-loss record, will take on the 8-4 Buffalo Bulls, who will  represent the Mid-American Conference.

Dubbed “Bowl games are better in the Bahamas,” fans can get to watch an historic game between the Flames and the Bulls at 11am on Saturday, January 4 at Thomas A. Robinson National Stadium. 

It will be carried live on ESPN2 and will simulcast on ESPN+, the leading sports streaming service and it will be the first time that the Bahamas Bowl will be played in January, and the first time the game has been played on a Saturday. 

This is only the second time the bowl has featured two teams with eight or more wins. The other game was in 2017 when the MAC’s Ohio Bobcats (8-4) routed the UAB Blazers (8-4) out of Conference USA.

The Blazers came back for the 2022 edition of the HomeTown Lenders’ Bahamas Bowl and they won 24-20 over the Miami RedHawks from the MAC. 

Coming into next month’s game, Buffalo won eight games for the first time since 2019 and finished tied for third in the MAC with a 6-2 conference record. 

Pete Lembo became the first Bulls head coach to win eight games in his debut season. Buffalo won the 2019 Bahamas Bowl, beating Charlotte 31-9.  

Liberty, on the other hand, will play in its sixth consecutive bowl game, reaching the postseason every year since joining the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2019. The Flames are making their first trip to the Bahamas. Head coach Jamey Chadwell is 21-4 in two seasons at Liberty and 52-10 as a head coach since 2020. The Bahamas Bowl has been played at Thomas A. Robinson Stadium in Nassau, which was undergoing renovations last year in advance of the World Athletics Relays track and field competition. That event attr, the only collegiate football game to be played in the Caribbean, was first placed in the Bahamas in 2014 when the Conference USA’s Western Kentucky Hilltoppers held on for a 49-48 win over the Central Michigan Chippewas of the MAC in what turned out to be the most exciting game of the season. 

CMU rallied from a 49-14 deficit with a 34-point fourth quarter outburst, including a last-gasp, 75-yard, three-lateral pass play that resulted in a touchdown as time expired — a sequence that was named the top play of the 2014 bowl season by ESPN’s SportsCenter.

The teams will be playing for the prestigious Prime Minister’s Trophy, the symbol of the Bahamas Bowl championship. It is a unique creation that represents the Commonwealth of the Bahamas in several ways.

The Bahamas Bowl, which was introduced to the Bahamas by Lea Miller, the CEO of Complete Sports Management, has been played every year with the exception of 2020 when it was cancelled because of th Covid-19 pandemic, 

While neither teams participating this year has any Bahamian players on their rosters, Liberty can pride itself of having two rising young female track athletes on their team.

Shania Adderley, best remembered for her role in helping the Bahamas mixed 4 x 400 metre relay team at the World Relays in Nassau to qualify for the 2024 Olympic Games, is now a freshman sprinter from Tabernacle Baptist in Freeport.

Although there was some controversy, Adderley did travel to the Olympics in Paris, France in July-August, but didn’t compete on the relay team that didn’t advance out of the preliminaries.

She will be joined at Liberty by India Cartwright, a senior hurdler from St. John’s College, who transferred from Oral Roberts University during the off-season.