Opening Thoughts:
How about them Bearcats! What an awesome day in Maryville. The weather was perfect and there was a great crowd to celebrate family day / Scott Bostwick memorial. The black uniforms were great - Scott would have loved to see his players in them, as it was his idea. The giant banner on the stadium was very cool to see, and the naming of Scott Bostwick Dr in front of the stadium was a very nice touch. It seems like every game in Maryville, the tailgating experience just gets better and better. I think I counted like 3-4 big inflatable things for the kids to play on, as well as face painters and clowns and more. Maryville is rapidly becoming one of, if not THE best game day atmospheres in all of Division II football.
Last Weeks Recap:
What is there really to say? The Bearcats stomped the Tigers into a mud puddle. While these games are great experience for the younger team members, they are kind of boring to watch as a fan. I find myself looking up stats during the game just to see if there is anything exciting to think about. Don't get me wrong, I would much rather be beating the snot out of someone than losing, but usually the closer games are more fun to watch. Going into this game, there were a lot of questions about Trevor Adams. I think that he answered a lot of those questions. I think that he is going to be an excellent QB for NW someday. At this time, he looked like it was his second game starting - which it was, and there is nothing wrong with that. He dominated the Hays defense and made excellent decisions. But all things being equal - I would take a healthy BC over Trevor Adams at this time. BC just seems to have those intangibles that TA doesn't yet - but I can see that they are there and will develop over time.
Offensively, there isn’t much that NW didn’t do to the Tigers. The Bearcats averaged 10.2 yards per play. That is freaking amazing. The Bearcats amassed a total of 589 total yards – 232 on the ground and 357 in the air. In my book, I think that Kyle Kilgore was probably the offensive player of the game. He is definitely showing why he made that preseason all conference team and why he is a team captain. Trevor Adams completed an impressive 73.9% and threw 4 touchdown passes. Very nice! Looking at the stat sheet, I would have to say that this was a good game to be a second stringer – as it seems that most of the leaders were the traditional #2’s. Trevor Adams was great, Franklin (JF3) had 82 yards and 3 TD’s, and Kilgore & Shaw accounted for 226 yards & 4 TD’s. There was only one thing that I didn’t like about the offense – 3rd down conversions – granted NW only had 6 all game. But they were 1-6. Well I guess one went for a TD, but still they were 2-6. But overall – an amazing performance by the Bearcat Offense.
Defensively, I think that they did pretty darn good. They held a team that had been averaging 245 ypg rushing to only 152. NW allowed a little more thru the air (187 yards), but considering how much playing time the #2’s got, combined with the fact that NW was primed to stop the run, there is naturally going to be yards given up there. The NW offense was not on the field very much since they scored so fast, which means that the D was on the field for the majority of the game. Almost a 2-1 ratio in fact! The D held Andre Smith to only 78 yards – he had been averaging over 128 yards per game. I want to take a second and talk about Bryce Enyard. He is a red-shirt freshman who has 12 tackles, 1 breakup, and 4 – yes I said FOUR – interceptions. This kid is really going to be something if this trend continues thru his career. And if it does – he has a great future ahead of him! I did see one thing that really pissed me off with the defense – and that came from Derrick Thomas. It was during half time and the entire team got together in a giant huddle in the center of the field – all the players were facing in towards the center except for Thomas who was facing the opposing team and making gestures towards his groin. That is typical LSC trash. I truly was ashamed to see him do that on Tjeerdsma Field wearing a Bearcat uniform. I hope that the coaches and fellow players saw that too and explain to him this week that Bearcats don’t do that kind of crap!
This Week’s Match up:
This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. The week before the Fall Classic. The week before the Bearcats beat the Gorillas. The week before all those Pitt State fans get all disappointed and go crying to their monkey mommas. I could go on, but I think you get the point. This is the 10th Anniversary of the game being played at Camarohead. And I can’t think of a better way of celebrating that anniversary than setting a record as to the butt whooping NW bestow upon Pitt Stink. Overall, I am not sold on Pitt State. They really haven't played anyone (other than a horrid MoWorst to start the year) and haven't really dominated anyone (other than Billy Jewell). This team had to come from behind to beat Truman in the last minute of the game. I have a feeling this game is going to be a repeat of 2009 - PSU is coming in undefeated thinking they are a top tier team and will be run out of Arrowhead. If you can remember back to last year, NW was a shell of itself, came in and thought that they just needed to show up to win, played like absolute dog doodoo, and they still beat Pitt State. I’m willing to bet that that attitude will not reappear this year as there are a lot of young guys on the team that have never played Pitt State.
Despite the fact that I’m not sold on them, the Gorillas will still be the most difficult team that Northwest has played to date. They have a good Dline that helps them stop the run (they are only giving up 92 ypg) and a good corps of linebackers. Their weakness appears to be their secondary – which happens to be one of the Bearcat strengths. At this time, I am not sure who the starting QB is going to be for NW. I know that Coach Dorrel has said that BC will play in the game – but he did not specify that he would start. Apparently the injury to Blake’s hand is not as bad as was originally diagnosed. He was throwing the ball before the game on Saturday and was suited up just in case of an emergency. Regardless of who the QB is, they are going to need to play well and think quick – PSU currently has 17 sacks this season (granted 7 of them came against William Jewell) The NW oline is young, but I don’t think that they are anywhere near as bad as the Jewell Cardinal’s. This game, like most games, will be won in ditches. I like the fact that NW has Rod “The Black Wall” Williams back, and the rest of the starting Oline appears to be healthy. If they can provide the QB some time, I think NW will win this game by a large margin. If they can’t, it will be close. I would not be surprised to see Franklin have a break out game.
Being from Nebraska, I grew up on Husker football. Which means that I grew up on option football. I don’t know if there is a more perfect play in my mind than a beautifully executed option play. I still can vision Tommy Frazier or the late Brook Berringer (the best option QB in my mind) running that play to perfection. For that reason, I always enjoy watching Pitt St and formerly UNO. Option football, when ran correctly, is very difficult to defend. And PSU has been running the option long enough they know what they are doing. There are several basic strategies when trying to stop the option. The most common approach is to stack the box – basically putting 9-10 men inside the ‘box’ - within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. What generally works the best from my experience, is everyone on defense knowing their role. Their needs to be somebody assigned to take out the pitchman – thereby taking away the option for the QB and letting everyone key in on him. In the case of PSU, their QB – Zac Dickey is their leading rusher. Last year NW did a pretty decent job defending the option, but Dickey was able to get a lot of yards by running for his life out there. This is probably the quickest defense that NW has ever had. I think that this fact alone will be able to slow down the Pitt State offense. NW has always been able to stop the runs up the middle pretty well, what has been their weakness was the runs to the outside. The speed of the NW linebackers will definitely improve that weakness. Like I said with Oline, this will probably be the best offensive line that the NW Dline has seen to date. There has been some talk about how the Dline is small – which is kind of true, they are a bit smaller than previous lines – but I don’t know how much I trust the weights that are reported! But what the Dline loses from size, they more than make up for in their quickness. And I think I said it last week, but I’ll say it again – I’d rather have a slightly smaller strong quick defensive lineman, rather than some big tub o lard out there just taking up space. Coming in to this game, the NW D only has 6 sacks on the year and 5 QB hurries, that is going to need to improve as we are quickly approaching the meat of the conference schedule.
Special Teams improved greatly in the last week, but Ft Hays was able to get some decent field position on a couple of kick offs. This is kind of troublesome, as Pitt State is currently ranked #1 in the nation in kickoff returns. As far as the kicking game goes, I have faith in Adolf & Goodburn – hopefully we aren’t using Goodburn all that much. Shaw has really improved this year in his KO return – in previous years he was so fast that he would quickly outrun his blockers. This year he has learned to hold back a little bit and allow his blockers to make the play. If he continues to do this, I foresee several returns for TD’s this year.
Overall, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this be a shellacking on Pitt St or a close game. My gut tells me that this will be a big win for the Bearcats. The Gorillas will be able to score, but the Bearcats will score more and more often. NW wins this one 45-28
Interesting Facts/Statistics:
- NW is going for their 50th consecutive conference win
- I have never seen NW lose to Pitt State
- NW has only given up 300 yards rushing to PSU once in the past 11 pairings, Scott Ellis has placed a wager that if NW gives up more than 300 rushing yards, then he will be sporting a Pitt State avatar on the D2 messageboard for the remainder of the year.
- NW is currently ranked #1 in the country in scoring offense
- Bryce Enyard is currently tied for #2 in the nation for number of interceptions
- Jake Soy only has 1 TD so far this year
Quotes:
“I don’t know if it’s the weather or what, but this is a fun game to watch”
“I want to see you buy a magnetic koozie.”
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