Player Countdown: No. 21 P Alex Kinal

It has been well documented that Alex Kinal is one of the most prolific (at least in sheer number of punts) in the history of the NCAA through two years. Our own Bart Johnston has been keeping up with Kinal's progress towards the most punts in NCAA history in a career. Here is a snippet from his final article after last year:

Punts in the 2013 season: 86 (through two seasons, 24 games)

Career Punts: 181 (through 24 games)

Punts Needed for Ryan Quigley's ACC Record: 104

Punts Needed for Nick Harris' NCAA Record: 152 (record is 322 by Nick Harris of California between 1997-2000)

Kinal's Yearly Average: 90.5

Quigley's Yearly Average: 71.0

Harris' Yearly Average: 80.5

Kinal hails from Adelaide, South Australia before coming to the United States.He helped lead the Walkerville Junior Football Club to four straight premiership titles in Australian Rules Football before switching to play American Football. He is also a very impressive (for a punter) 6-4, 205 pounds.

Of Kinal's 181 punts, 49 have been inside the 20, and 61 have been fair caught. His greatest asset is the hangtime that he gets on most of his balls. Although his punting average is 40.3 through the first two years, the airtime helps mitigate returns from the other team.

It is very likely that Kinal will have another pretty big year numbers wise in punting. Hopefully his numbers will start to go down a bit as the season progresses, but with a new coaching philosophy and several new players, I am guessing that it will take a few games to start clicking.

We will keep everybody updated on the #KinalKount as the season goes on. Needless to say, Kinal is very important to the team, and that is why he came it at number 21 on the BSD countdown.