Opening Thoughts:
I think Clark Griswold summed up my thoughts after the game best: “I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where's the Tylenol?”
I have said for a long time that this game should stay at Arrowhead as long as it’s a financial windfall for the university. It’s a great recruiting tool, and like I said the money is great. But I think that the money is going to be getting less and less. Last year there was 16,000 fans in attendance, and this year there was only 15,000 fans. I think that those numbers will continue to fall if the game continues to be televised and the game tickets continue to go up. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still go no matter what, but the casual fan probably won’t. This game has kind of taken the place of the Homecoming game, as it is the game where people meet up with old friends and reminisce. I’m sure that the business owners in both Maryville and Pittsburg would love to see this game return to being on campus. After the last two years, I’m starting to agree with them.
Last Weeks Recap:
Talk about a tale of two halves. In the first half NW looked like they normally do. They came out, played the game that they wanted to, executed like they know how to do – and they went into the half up 28-6. On of Mel Tjeerdsma and Scott Bostwick’s greatest strengths, was making teams play the game that NW wanted to play. AD did that for the first half – but after halftime that was a completely different story. The Legendary coach Dr Tom Osborn is famously quoted as saying that you can always tell how desperate a team is by how quickly they go to a ‘trick’ play. Well, the first time that NW kicked off to Pitt State – they did a reverse. I knew right then it was going to be a long day for the Bearcats. I never thought I would see the day when AD would go conservative and Tim Beck would pull out all the stops.
.Football is a game that is all about momentum. This game reminded me a lot of the 2009 national championship game. NW had it in the first half, Pitt State in the second. Pitt came out in the second half, drove down the field and created momentum. That momentum was magnified when 6 plays later, BC threw a horribly under thrown ball (he had a man open deep) that was intercepted and ran back for a pick 6. So in a matter of 6 minutes, the game went from being 28-6 to 28-20. That is quite the swing. Each team then traded 3 & outs and then NW started their drive and drove all the way down the field – including a TD that was called back for a phantom penalty. In an unexpected turn of events – apparently The Goalpost was so distraught over not being even considered for the All-Decade team, he switched teams and deflected a chip shot by Adolf! Very uncool GP! NW went 0-3 on their next possession, but tied it up at 35 in their next/last possession.
You could really tell that the NW D had not had to play an entire 4 quarter game. They were hurting in the 4th quarter. Yet they were still hanging in there. There were also a lot of injuries in the game. Enyard was out due to a concussion, Matt Meinert obtained some bruised ribs during the game and was out in the second half. Prior to this game, if you had told me that the NW D was going to hold the Pitt State offense to less than 200 yards rushing – I would have guaranteed you a Bearcat victory. But alas that wasn’t the case. By everyone’s (including Pitt State fans) Zac Dickey played the best 30 minutes of football of his Gorilla career. He was making throws that nobody expected him to be able to make. The Dline was not able to put any kind of pass pressure on him made his life pretty easy too. The Pitt St receivers were able to get behind the NW secondary all day because the DB’s were so quick to come up and help on the rush defense. They need to learn to let the Dline and LB’s do that for them. But they didn’t, and ended up getting burnt in the second half for it. You can bet that Ken Gordon will be working with them on that in the upcoming week as NW faces a team that likes to throw!
I said earlier that this game reminded me of the National Championship game- and I’m sticking by that. NW got straight up outcoached in the second half. Why do you go away from the rush? When you have Franlin that is averaging over 11 yards per carry, and Simmons who is over 5, yet they go away from it. Why not run until Pitt State is able to stop you from running? What is really frustrating is that I think that NW is the better team by far. When the NW O was on the same page, they were unstoppable. When the D was able to communicate, they shut down PSU. Urgh! So frustrating. Oh well. This is a learning experience – not only for the players, but for the coaching staff as well. The players seemed to come out at half time and not have the intensity that they had in the first half. I can see this going one of two ways – either the team gets down on themselves and this becomes a very bad thing, or the exact opposite. This becomes the fuel that has awoken the sleeping giant. I believe that this team has more overall talent than any other team at Northwest. My hope is that they team learns from this. Often times you can learn more from a loss, than you can from a win. I hope that the team uses this as a stepping stool and they go out and beat the snot out of the rest of their opponents. I said it after the almost loss to UCM last year – I’m not afraid of them and given the opportunity of playing them again, it will be a completely different outcome!
This Week’s Match up:
I don't know about you, but I can't wait for Saturday to come. I hate the taste of losing - and I'm sure that the players and coaches do as well. You can bet that they want to get that taste out as soon as possible. If I didn't loathe the Donkeys, I would feel sorry for them. Cuz you can bet that the Bearcats will be extracting their revenge on the Mooles.
The Mooles are currently 4-1 with their loss coming two weeks ago to MoWorst. They have beaten the Wonder Boys of Arky Tech, Truman, MoSuck, and eeked out a win against Emporia. I have heard that BC will not be playing, but I know that he got his bell rung pretty good at the end of the Pitt State fiasco and Trevor Adams came in and finished off the final drive. I do know that BC missed some practice time this week and is still having headaches. But I have full faith in Trevor Adams to fill his shoes. My guess is that the Bearcats will score early, and score often. The Mooles have given up over 200 yards rushing in 3 out of their 5 games, and given up over 300 yards of passing in 2 games. UCM has given up a total of 2135 all purpose yards in 5 games - that is approx 550 yards per game. I really don't think that the Bearcats will have a hard time scoring. JF3 had a great game last week, and I would not be surprised to see him have back to back big games. Historically the UCM game is when somebody has a breakout game. I don't know who that could be on this team but there are a lot of weapons on the field anytime NW is on offense, I would not be shocked to add another playmaker to the list after this game. Several players were not featured all that much last week, like Kilgore and Pierce, that I would like to see get the ball this week. AD admitted last year that his game plan going into the game was not right, and there was not good play calling during the game. I'm hoping that that doesn't happen again. Because there is no reason that NW shouldn't light up the scoreboard like that deaf dumb and blind kid did to the pinball machine!
UCM definitely has a Jim Svoboda offense. What I mean by that is that they definitely favor the pass over running the ball. Last year the Donkeys had a legitimate running threat in Anthony Stewart. They don't have that this year. In fact, they don't have anyone that averages more than 34 yards per game. As a team they are averaging only 94 yards per game, and that stat is skewed by the fact that in one game they had 218 yards - you take that one game out and they are only averaging 63.25 per game. Prior to last week, I would have said that NW would have no troubles shutting down a passing offense. I still believe that, but question it a little bit. This week the DBs wont be breaking off of coverage to come up on run support. So it will be basically the NW secondary vs the UCM WR's. I like that match up. Bryce Enyard will be back in action which a good thing. If UCM had much of a run threat I would say that this game was going to be a shoot out, but I don’t think that they do. Granted I didn’t think Pitt Stank had much of a pass game going into last week, but we won’t go there.
I’m going to go big on this one, I think NW returns to their dominating ways and wins this one 48 - 28.
Interesting Facts/Statistics:
· Three of the top 5 scorers in the MIAA are Bearcats: Simmons, Adolf, Franklin
· Despite only going 3/10 on 3rd Downs last week, the Bearcats are still #2 in the conference
· NW still leads the conference in scoring offense and scoring defense
· NW D has only allowed 24 out of 82 3rd down conversions
Quotes:
“Why’d we have to lose to those bastards! Anybody but them!” – Mark Kilgore
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