Western Kentucky’s defense will be tasked Saturday with slowing down a speedy quarterback.

Charlotte QB Hasaan Klugh isn’t much of a threat in the passing game. He’s completed just 47.17 percent of his passes this year, averaging 4.96 yards per attempt with five touchdowns against eight interceptions.

But Klugh is dangerous on the ground, having run for all five of the 49ers’ rushing TDs this season. He averages 4.0 yards per carry and 50.17 rushing yards per game.

Take sack yardage out of those totals and the numbers improve. Klugh averages 76.2 yards per game and 6.0 yards per carry on non-sack quarterback rushes, according to SB Nation’s Football Study Hall.

It’s no wonder then that safety Drell Greene listed stopping the Charlotte quarterback in the run game as the top key to a WKU win Saturday. The Toppers (3-2 overall, 1-1 Conference USA) will host the 49ers (0-6, 0-2) at 3:30 p.m. at Houchens-Smith Stadium in a Homecoming game streamed on Flofootball.com.

“He’s a very big threat,” the junior Greene said, “and we have to contain him.”

Defensive coordinator Clayton White is familiar with Klugh, a 6-foot-1, 192-pound redshirt junior. White was a defensive assistant at North Carolina State when the QB was coming out of Central Cabarrus High School in Concord, N.C.

“Hassan Klugh’s a really good player who’s athletic,” White said. “We looked at him at N.C. State when I was there. As soon as I looked at the roster and saw his name, I knew exactly who he was.”

Klugh started his career at FCS school North Carolina A&T, then transferred to coach Brad Lambert’s Charlotte program.

Klugh took over as the team’s quarterback midway through the 2016 season and was named the 49ers’ offensive MVP after a 4-8 year. He accounted for 18 touchdowns last season – 10 passing, eight rushing.

WKU reserve quarterback Davis Shanley has been imitating Klugh this week for the scout team offense, coach Mike Sanford said, getting the defense used to facing that QB-run-heavy attack.

The freshman Shanley is a “really natural zone read tactician and technician” who’s given the first-team Hilltopper defense “a great look,” Sanford said.

Sanford compared Charlotte’s attack to the pistol offense revolutionized by Nevada-Reno and quarterback Colin Kaepernick in the late 2000s.

Sanford’s father and current WKU assistant Mike Sanford Sr. faced Kaepernick’s Wolf Pack in those days when he was head coach at Nevada-Las Vegas. Sanford was a graduate assistant on his dad’s UNLV staff and called the Nevada pistol “one of the hardest offenses in college football to stop at the time.”

Klugh is just tall enough at 6-1 that he can read the defense and make the proper decisions on whether to hand off or tuck and run, Sanford said.

“What makes that offense go is the quarterback,” Sanford said. “A lot of people try to run it across college football. It’s a copycat world we live in. Everybody pretty much failed to run that offense effectively because they didn’t have the right quarterback to do it.

“This guy that we’re about to see, No. 7 for Charlotte, he’s the right guy for it, because he can really accelerate. He’s got the length and acceleration to get on the edge.”

White said stopping the 49ers’ run game will come down to keeping eyes on the quarterback and making tackles in the open field.

Linebackers Joel Iyiegbuniwe (team-best 42 tackles) and Masai Whyte (30 tackles) figure to be busy Saturday.

“The guy with the ball is the most important guy,” White said, “so make sure you know where he’s at.”{&end}