Southern Virginia has yet to have a winning season. A new coach will try to accomplish that goal.

Mike Smith, formerly the offensive coordinator at the Buena Vista university, takes over as the head coach for the Knights’ fifth season of varsity football. He replaces Gary Buer, who resigned after violating NAIA financial-aid rules.

SVU returns five starters on offense and five on defense from a team that went 2-8 last year (a third win was forfeited). The Knights opened the season Saturday at Kentucky Wesleyan — one of only four road games on their schedule.

Nine freshmen from last year’s team, including two starters, left to go on Mormon missions. Five junior-college transfers have come aboard.

“We’re still very young and we’ll still have to start multiple freshmen,” Smith said. “Many of our [Latter-day Saints] kids go on Mormon missions for two years, similar to BYU, so … every year here it’s a new group of freshmen that have to play for you, until we settle in a little bit more and get more returned missionaries back. We’ve done a better job bringing in some junior-college kids, and we’ll see how they can play.”

Smith spent preseason practice finding a successor to quarterback Jared King, who threw for 1,045 yards as a senior last fall.

But the running game is also a concern. The Knights averaged just 69 yards rushing out of their one-back, pass-heavy set last fall.

“We struggled some up front,” Smith said. “We had a hard time running the ball.”

They will try to bolster the ground game this year by using two-back sets more often.

“We’ll still be a wide-open team that runs multiple formations and throws the ball down the field, but we’ll be a little bit more I-backs and a little bit more power football,” Smith said.

Last year, SVU played three of its four home games at Parry McCluer High School; it had to move the other to Amherst County High School’s artificial turf field because a downpour left Parry McCluer’s field unplayable.

This year, the Knights will play three home games at Parry McCluer and the other four at Amherst County.

“Parry McCluer has a grass surface and … we kind of tear it up, between us and the high school, and it’s really not fair to them,” SVU athletic director Tom Longenecker said.

About one-third of the Knights receive partial grants.