Sadness Accrues: Last throughts...

A few last thoughts...

The other controversial call was the Knapke fumble with about 5 minutes left.  Coach said he saw the replay on the board and figured it was not a fumble (and started to call another play)...in which case, he has better eyes than I do.  Anyway, I went back and checked that one.  It is a much closer call than the pick.  It is harder to capture in stills, but Knapke's knee is down and his back is to the camera so you can't tell what the ball is doing.  As he rolls over, the ball comes out.  It is realy close, it certainly looks like he was down but I can't argue with a ruling that you can't see what the ball is doing as his knee hits because you can't.

Special teams....BG did not try a FG, and the punting was a little less effective, with a 37 yard net, which is about average.  WMU had a really good day.  We weren't pressuring their punter so he would just stand there and wait to get his guys down there...with no risk of return, he could kick a line drive ball that could roll.  It was very effective.  BG eventually rushed to force him to kick the ball.

One thing I neglected to mention as it relates to defense.  BG was poor on 3rd and 4th down...combined, WMU was 11 of 18 on those downs.  BG did hold them to 1 TD in 3 red zone trips (the 4th on the stat sheet was where WMU took a knee on the BG 1).

Finally, this was a huge deal for WMU and part of why I was so nervous in the preview.  They did the Gatorade dump, players were jumping into the stands.  WMU viewed this as a message game, beating the defending champs on their field.  I don't begrudge them one bit of their excitement.  They were awful last year and clearly are back in play this year.  They are getting it done and a hat tip is in order.  They were the better team Saturday.