Northwestern State?s Dudley Guice Nets National Football Foundation Honor
NATCHITOCHES, La. ? Three-time All-Academic Southland Conference receiver Dudley Guice of Northwestern State, the 2008 SLC Football Student-Athlete of the Year, has been included in the Hampshire Honor Society selected by the National Football Foundation.
Guice, who signed a free agent deal with the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, was among 564 players from 266 college football programs to receive the NFF’s Hampshire Honor Society award recognizing outstanding accomplishments in the classroom, in the community and on the playing field.
Guice has been the Demons’ top receiver each of the last two seasons.
The 6-foot-3, 217-pound native of Fayette, Miss., and product of Trinity Episcopal Day School had 78 career catches for 1,213 yards and 11 touchdowns, averaging 15.5 yards per catch. He also ran for two touchdowns on reverses.
The 2008 Southland Conference Football Student-Athlete of the Year, Guice graduated cum laude in May 2008 with a 3.60 grade point average in criminal justice. He took classes in a concentration of addiction studies while playing his senior season.
After an injury-troubled start to his senior season in 2008, Guice used two-straight 100-yard games including a career-best final game (11 catches, 190 yards in a win at Stephen F. Austin) to surge into the Demons’ top spot on their receiving charts for a second straight season.
It helped earn him an invitation to the Texas vs. the Nation All-Star Game, where he turned heads with a strong week of practices and was the game’s leading receiver with five catches, including a TD, while playing only the second half.
He caught a TD pass as a sophomore against Ole Miss and ran for a 28-yard TD as a junior against Ole Miss in a 38-31 loss.
Guice displayed a knack for pressure catches and making difficult grabs in those situations to convert third and fourth downs in his final two seasons. He also showed toughness and a commitment to play in his sophomore season, when he suffered a badly broken jaw requiring two surgeries in the Demons’ 2006 season opener at Kansas. He returned to play six weeks later.
He was named the social sciences’ department’s Senior (social sciences) Major of the Year in May 2007. Guice was also voted to the 44-man FCS Academic All-Star Team for 2008 chosen by the National Collegiate Athletic Directors Association.
He topped the 2008 Demons with 606 receiving yards, 35 catches and 6 TD receptions. Those numbers were spiked by a career-best 11 catches for 190 yards, including a tightly-defended 74-yard TD catch on a reverse pass to open the scoring in the season-ending 31-17 win at Stephen F. Austin
Guice suffered an ankle sprain in Northwestern’s opening win and aggravated the injury in the first half of the second game at Baylor. He did not have a catch before being sidelined against the Bears, and did not play in the next three games.
Guice returned for the start of Southland Conference play and had a 46-yard TD catch in a 36-28 win over Nicholls. Overall, he had four games with at least five receptions.
He caught a 51-yard TD bomb against FCS playoff entry Texas State in an overtime Demon win. Guice made five grabs for 105 yards with a 28-yard score against arch-rival McNeese State, a week before his career game at SFA. His 11 catches were the third-best single game total in 101 years of Demons football.