Great Barnes Article in USA Today

Quick thing, a great profile of Freddie Barnes and his Mother was in the USA Today.  Just a reminder that people have the power to overcome their circumstances, and a transformational story lives within each of us.  By this time next year, Freddie Barnes and his Mom will both be college graduates.

25 Kangaroo Questions

What is their body of work?

It is not great. They have won only one FBS game, against their arch-rival Kent. This has to be a tough year in Akron. They were set up for an exciting season with a new stadium, and in general it has been a dreadful year. You have to look back and remember that a lot of people thought they could beat Indiana. They suspended Jacquamain for the season, and then the backup ripped his knee up. There were reported problems with the coaching staff...just a rough year at Akron.

What is their best result?

By default, their best result is beating their arch-rival, the Kent Golden Flashes.

What is their worst result?

They provided Buffalo with their only MAC win.

What is their turnover ratio?

They aren't losing because of this---they are only -3 for the year.

Offense:

How is their QB Play?

This has probably been the single biggest issue for them. One of the reasons I put this as the first question is that I believe in the MAC, it is very difficult to win without good QB play. As noted above, their top two choices for QB are gone, so Patrick Nicely, highly touted true FR, is in the game now. Nicely was originally a BG commit but switched when Coach Brandon was let go. His QB ranking is 101, just a tick ahead of where Kelly Page was. He had a better game against Kent but not a great game. It is really tough to be a true FR QB.

What was their scoring and yards per play?

They are 12th in yards per play and 11th in scoring in the MAC. They are struggling to score points.

Can they run the ball?

We have already talked about Nicely's struggles, but if it wasn't for BG and Miami, they would also have the worst run attack in the MAC.

Do they pass the ball?

See above. They have 53% completions, 11 INTS, 4% interceptions and a very low 6.2 yards per attempt.

How is their run/pass balance?

Well, they don't do either very well. In terms of play mix, their last two games have seen 69 runs and 69 passes.

Do they convert on 3rd Down.

At about 30% their are only five FBS teams that are worse. Obviously, this is not surprising given that what we have seen above. They are likely to be facing harder to convert situations with a poorer attack.

Do they score in the red zone?

On a straight percentage, they are worse than Bowling Green, worst in the conference and 117th out of 120 in the FBS. The difference is Bowling Green has generated 51 red zone trips and Akron has only 31. Thier per trip average is 3.5 points, which is not good.

Do they protect the quarterback?

They have a veteran line that has given up 25 sacks, which is one fewer than BG. However, BG has thrown 485 passes and Akron only 292. I believe that if BG can keep them from running, as we did against Miami, we can tee up some pressure and do what we did to Dysert, which is cause havoc.

Defense:

Topline: Scoring and yards per play.

Akron is 10th in scoring defense, 7th in total defense and 5th in yards per play. Normally, when we see numbers like that, our true enemy reveals itself somewhere in the numbers.

Do they defend the run effectively?

They are 8th in the MAC with 4.3 yards per carry, which is not great but better than BG for the year. It will be interesting to see if we can run on Akron.

Could they be passed on?

They are 7th in pass efficiency defense. They do have 11 interceptions, which is a lot. They are allowing 60% completions which is 10th in the MAC, but for only 6.2 yards per catch, which is 4th.

Did they get off the field on 3rd down?

Negative. They allow conversions on 45% of their third down plays, which is second to last in the MAC. (Clue number one, by the way, to our question).

Do they defend in the red zone?

First, they have allowed 45 red zone trips, which is among the worst in the MAC. Once there, they allow 4.4 points per trip, which is pretty typical.

Do they pressure the QB?

Uh, no, they have 7 sacks in 10 games. Only Western Kentucky has fewer in FBS. Our line's goal should be for Tyler to leave the field with his uniform clean.

Special Teams:

Punting?

They are 10th in the MAC in net punting. They have been blocked once and allowed two returns for TD. When teams do return on them, they average 11 yards.

Punt Return?

They are 10th here too, though they do have one return TD.

Placekicking?

Their kicking rotation sounds like the criminal docket at the Hague--Branko Rogovic and Igor Iveljic. Rogovic has been getting the kicks lately, and he is 5-13, with 3 misses inside 30 and a 45 yard long. They are the only MAC team to miss more than half their FGs.

Kickoff?

They are 8th in the MAC with a 40 yard average (nearly), which means starting on the 30 is par for the course. They have allowed a TD.

Kickoff Return?

This is among their stronger points, they are 4th in the MAC and have a TD. Their net is 40.2, which means they start on the 30 today, on average.

Miscellaneous: Overall atmospherics and intangibles.

Even if Akron is playing better, (and they beat Kent but gave up huge points to Temple) this is a game we should win.

It would be great to reward the home fans.

Beyond that, it would be great to see the progress continue and BG play as well or better than it did in Oxford last week.

There will be a shockingly small crowd at the Doyt on Friday. The 5:30 kickoff time is a joke. Sometimes, they takes the road team out as much as the home team. Akron is either super-resilient or weary of the wars and ready to pack it in (or quit at the first sign of trouble.)

This is a game BG should win, and let's hope we can get it done.

MAC Blogger Roundtable, My Responses

1) Do you like the MAC's current bowl setup, where the bowls get to pick, rather than a 1 goes to A, 2 to B, etc? How would you change that, if you could?

I think that it is probably as good as it is going to get. I think flexibility is good for two reasons. First, the flexibility allows teams to not necessarily go to the same bowl every year. Second, it keeps the bowls happy, and that should be our primary goal.

2) Recognizing that probably no one will be fired this year, who do you think will be the NEXT coach in the MAC to get a pink slip ?

I predict that the next MAC Coach to get the pink slip will be JD Brookhart.

3) What do you think can be done, if anything, to get the MAC more bowl tie-ins?

From an historic perspective, the MAC has never had it so good, bowl-wise. Us old-timers remember when the MAC had one bowl tie-in, and frankly were lucky to have that. There were even a couple years with no bowl game for the MAC. So, the current set up is pretty good. For the MAC to get another bowl tie-in, I am assuming that they would have to buy our way into a game.

4) Who do you like in the MAC's only pick-'em game of this week, NIU at Ohio, and why?

This is a really tough call. I like NIU because they have been playing well in the much tougher of the two decisions, and they are a difficult team to beat. I think OU is overrated.

5) MAC Power Poll

1. CMU
2. Temple
3. NIU
4. OU
5. WMU
6. BG
7. Kent
8. Toledo
9. Buffalo
10. Ball State
11. Akron
12. Miami
13. EMU

Recruiting News

The news on the Falcon verbals keeps coming in...

Isaiah Byler was named all-conference.

In this article, you can see Kevonte Martin-Manley's stat line, which is pretty good (59 catches, 7 TDs)

Caleb Watkins and Nick McKnight's Middletown team ran into a buzz saw at the end of a really great season.

Watkins was named the district's offensive player of the year.

Watkins, McKnight, a D-L Darius Gilbert were all named all-district.

New O-Line verbal Cody Silk gets credit from his running back for helping to open holes

Heath Jackson of Ada led his team to a first round victory in the state playoffs.

Marcus Beaurem had a TD pass as his team won their first round game as well.

Jude Adjei-Barimah was Honorable Mention All-District for Central Ohio.

QB verbal Trent Hurley had 2 TD passes as his team won a Penna state playoff game by the mercy rule (you can do that?)

CBSSports Blogpoll is Final and on the AIR

Well, here you go. The CBSSports.com blogpoll is out. Here are the rankings, click through for more.

Xavier Part II, with charts

So, courtesy of statsheet.com, here is the sad tale of the Xavier game, told in its full and foul glory. The effective FG% for Xavier is just sick...(effective FG counts 3-pointers as 1.5x a regular FG), and ours is bad even for our team. The FTs are not good either, but there is no point in looking past the one key fact of the game, and that is that the Musketeers just killed us with their shooting.

We took care of the ball real well, in fact. Todd Walker said before the game that Xavier plays a no-risk defensive style, and if you can shoot like that, why not?

NCAA Basketball Stats

Final CBSsports.com Blogpoll Ballot

I made one adjustment, dropping WI a couple spots.

Rank	Team	Delta
1	Florida	1
2	Alabama	1
3	Texas
4	TCU	2
5	Boise State	1
6	Cincinnati	1
7	Georgia Tech
8	LSU
9	Oregon	1
10	Ohio State	6
11	Iowa	2
12	Penn State	9
13	Pittsburgh	1
14	Stanford	10
15	Wisconsin	4
16	Houston	4
17	Utah	4
18	Oklahoma State
19	Southern Cal	8
20	Arizona	3
21	Oregon State	1
22	North Carolina
23	California	2
24	Virginia Tech	1
25	Brigham Young
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: Miami (Florida) (#15), South Florida (#22).