Over the past 12 football seasons-current head coach Doug Martin's first six seasons and the six years prior-Kent State has finished the
month of November 9-27.

Former head coach Dean Pees compiled a 3-12 November
record in six years at Kent State while Martin was 6-14 in the first six years
of his seven-season tenure leading
the
Golden
Flashes.

The only time during that span Kent State had success in November was during
the 2003 and 2004 seasons, the final two years of Josh Cribbs' career
at quarterback.

"I don't know what (the problem in November) was in Dean's
era; I can tell you what it's been in ours, is the starting quarterback
has never been around in November, other than Josh," Martin said. "Josh
hardly ever got hurt and when he did he could play through it. Last year we
didn't have ([db]Spencer Keith[/db]) in November. Several times we didn't
have (Julian) Edelman in November. That's been the biggest difference
for us."

Already in 2010, the Flashes are 0-1 in November following Saturday's
28-10 loss to Temple.

And with three games left, the Flashes again may be forced to play without
its starting quarterback as Keith suffered a thumb injury late in the Temple
game and is listed as day-to-day moving forward.

"They did x-rays on his thumb (Monday) morning and they all came back
negative," Martin said. "He doesn't have anything broken.
It's just going to be a matter of can he grip the ball and throw. He
does have a sprain in that thumb, so it's going to be a day-to-day thing
I believe and we'll just have to see."

Kent State's training staff is investigating different methods on taping
Keith's thumb to allow him to best throw the football. But, his status
likely won't be known until the start of Saturday's game against
Army.

Should Keith be sidelined, Martin is ready to turn to backup Giorgio Morgan and even third-stringer Sal Battles.

Morgan has thrown just nine passes this season and Battles has only seen time
on the special teams units.

"Giorgio will get more one reps (in practice). I'm also going
to work Sal Battles in there some and I may even look at using both of those
guys and rotating them by play if I have to," Martin said. "What
we've got to do is probably have two separate game plans for this game:
what we can do with Spencer and what he can do and then what the other guys
can do."

Martin's reason for possibly rotating quarterbacks is to simplify the
offense and to provide each player with a set of plays suited to his specific
skill set.

"I think there's some comfort for those guys if I can send them
in with a play and maybe kind of coach them up before that play and then put
them in there, instead of them just being out there on their own the whole
time," Martin said. "We're going to explore every opportunity
and every option that we possibly have."