The Falcon's homestand ends tomorrow with the Temple Owls coming to town. Temple plays MAC teams as part of their entry fee to be able to play MAC football.
This is the best team we have played in this homestand, and is the best team we can expect to see in the Stroh until the Spartans come next year. Let's check out what we can expect. Temple has won 12 straight games against the MAC and 17 out of their last 22. They have won all three meetings with the Falcons, including the last one 63-39.
Last season, they were 26-8 and finished with an RPI of 29. They made the Big Dance, where they lost in the second round to #2 seed San Diego State in Double OT.
They enter this season highly touted. College Basketball Prospectus has them second in the A-10 as does the official pre-season A-10 poll of media and coaches.
Temple is 3-1 this year. This is their first true road game. They beat Penn to open the season at the Palestra, and then went to Puerto Rico, where they beat WMU by 14, lost to Purdue and then beat Wichita State to close it out. They have been off for a week.
The Owls are coached by Fran Dunphy, one of college basketball's classic coaches. He racked up great records at Penn and at Temple, and has put his own mark on the program after taking over for the deranged John Chaney. He has put his own mark on the program--Chaney played a very defensively oriented match-up zone defense, but Dunphy has opened things up a little bit. Last season, they were 4th in the A-10 in scoring and defense, but they allowed on 62 points a game, 37th in D1.
Their most prominent player is Juan Fernandez. He averages 15 points and 4 assists per game. He is a senior from Argentina. Their leading scorer is another senior, Ramone Moore, who is averaging over 40 minutes per game, if you can believe that. He is scoring 20 points per game on 42% shooting and does not rank high on efficiency rankings.
As a side note, I'd be interested to know if there are any players who get 20 points a game efficiently. Seems like every time you look, you find out you have to take a bunch of shots to get there.
Anyway, there other marquee player is Nigerian Michael Eric, who leads the A-10 with 11 rebounds a game. He is a 6'11" graduate student.
As a team, on offense, Temple likes to attack the basket. SO FAR this season, they have not been shooting a lot of 3s. That was what I said in the GW game, and we saw what happened there, so who can tell, but it does not appear they are committed to getting 3s.
On defense, they focus on shooting percentage. They don't seem to force a lot of turnovers or get steals, but they do block shots and force opponents to shoot poorly. They are shooting 42% so far against the Owls and 29% from 3.
This is a very tough matchup for the Falcons. On the other hand, teams win games like this every day in college basketball. It is going to require the Falcons giving a huge effort on the defensive end of the floor and on the boards, and then getting some scoring from whomever to get enough points to win.
Looking now at the numbers....
BG had 3 one-play scoring drives, so some of these numbers have to be considered in that light. Because scoring on one-play is good...
UB had 21 first downs to BG's 17. UB ran 88 plays and BG ran only 66. BG, however, outgained the Bulls by 10 yards, which translated into a 5.4-3.9 advantage in yards per play. While 5.4 yards per play is adequate, our defense should be very pleased to only allow 3.9 yards per play...it is a very good result.
For example, UB has the MAC's 2nd best rusher, Bo Oliver. He did get 127 yards, but it took him 34 carries and he had only 3.7 yards per carry, not a productive day. Even better, his longest run was 14 yards. For a team with our track record defending the run, that counts as a minor victory.
Similarly, Chazz Anderson, who can run from the QB slot, had a long run of 11...a better performance than the last 2 times BG met up with a running QB.
UB was forced to pass more than they wanted to. Anderson really struggled. He completed only 41% of his passes, and when adjusted for sacks, they got only 3.6 yards per passing attempt, which was less than their average yards per running attempt. Never happens.
They also only had 9 yards per reception, also an unproductive number.
Schilz seemed to have trouble getting in rhythm for much of the game--of course, there was the wind to contend with. He only completed 45% of his passes, but those 14 completed passes netted out to 236 yards, or 7.6 per pass and 16.9 per completion. The first number is good, the second number is very good.
And, of course, 4 TDs over 2 INTs.
Pettigrew had 50 yards on 12 carries, very nice for a fill in role and his first extensive experience. Jamel Martin, playing injured, had 44 yards on 14 carries. Both of them had a TD.
Overall, BG had 3.4 yards per carry---again, not a show stopping result, but good enough given what the team was facing.
Finally, for all the woes, BG was once again perfect in the red zone. Four trips, 4 TDs. Nice to see some improvement there.
There's a couple more things to wrap up from this game, and then we've got the winter to look at what happened and where we improved and where improvement was due. I'd expect a year-end presser this week...normally, those are pretty informative.
In the meantime, we finish in a tie for fourth with Miami, which I guess means we finished 4th.
No one wants to play in a game where a 4-7 team and a 3-8 team do battle for the ability to move into the off-season on a winning note...those stakes are not high even for your most casual fan. As such, there is only one thing worse than winning a game like that...and that would be to lose it.
Which our Falcons did not do. It was not always pretty, but in the end, on that Saturday, BG was good enough to register its first comfortable win in many weeks.
The key driving factor in the game was the wind, which was howling at levels similar to what it was for the BG-UT game. There were 70 points scored in the game...17 of them were scored into the wind.
On the surface, this would appear to not favor BG. The Falcons were down 2.5 RBs---Samuel, Hopgood, and Martin was at 50-60% according to Coach after the game. So, in a game where you will need to run the ball at least half the time, BG was depleted in the running back division.
Early, BG's offense had a not so fresh feeling, as a short BG punt into the wind led to a Buffalo FG and then Schilz threw a pick 6 to give the Bulls a 10-0 lead. Near the end of the first, Schilz was intercepted again (he was picked on 2 of his first 8 passes) and early in the second Buffalo was back up by 10.
Luckily for BG, Buffalo was having similar issues....Boo Boo had a pick that he returned to the 6 and the Falcons scored on their next play, and then Hutson had a blocked punt and BG scored on a one-play 28 yard drive to make it 17-14.
BG finally hit its stride near the end of the second quarter. Buffalo had the ball up 20-14 with just inside 2 minutes left, and they had the ball on their 32. They went 3 and out with 2 incomplete passes, which left BG with 1:17 left after a punt. Starting on its own 26, BG ran a 9-play, 74 yard TD drive that took only :54 off the clock......and BG never called one timeout.
They were assisted by one personal foul, and Schilz was incomplete several times, but there were three completions of more than 15 yards and with the penalty, that got BG into the end zone for a halftime lead.
BG opted to take the wind for the 3rd, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Coach said after the game that he told the offense they had to make it work because we were putting everything on a big 3rd quarter performance.
And that's exactly what happened. BG scored 21 3rd quarter points and essentially put the game away before Buffalo ever got the win again.
Buffalo came out of the locker room and got a first down and punted, and then BG went 3 and out but Schmiedebusch nailed a 76 yard punt that was downed on the Buffalo 4. You should never doubt the power of special teams to be game changing...because that punt set a lot in motion.
BG's defense produced a 3 and out with -1 net yard, and the punt into the wind left BG on the Buffalo 39. The Falcons capitalized on the short field with a seven play TD drive (yes, you read that right) that featured a 15 yard run by John Pettigrew (still reading right) and an 11 yard run by Matt Schilz (I shit you not).
Pettigrew got the TD on a 2 yard run, and BG was up 8. The defense got another 3 and out, and then Buffalo had a 4 yard punt and the Falcons ran a 7 play, 36 yard drive for another TD. Shaun Joplin had a 30 yard reception (he and Stokes are going to be very dangerous next year if Schilz can get time to throw) and then an INT was reversed on a pass interference call.
Martin, playing hurt, drove the ball in for the TD, and BG had a 15 point lead.
The defense got another 3 and out and BG was starting on its own 36. Coach said that he told Ruggerio to dial up something he liked offensively, because there was less than a minute left with the wind, and Schilz hit Jorden for a 64 yard reception and a 22 point Falcon lead.
It was the kind of quarter you need when you take the wind in the 3rd. Buffalo had to see a high mountain to climb, even with the wind. They are not a big passing team, so it was going to be a struggle.
They made a couple first downs before Kevin Moore forced an incomplete pass on 3rd and BG had the ball back. Pettigrew had 23 yards on two carries for 2 first downs for BG. Schmiedebusch nailed a 49 yard punt INTO THE WIND (touchback) and Buffalo drove inside the 30 before a penalty set them back and BG held on a 4th and 13 play.
At that point, 5 minutes were left, and Buffalo did score with a minute left, but BG had a comfortable victory, winning 42-28.
We'll have more later. As I said, it wasn't always pretty, but both teams had the win for half the game, Buffalo was at home, where they play well, and BG was better on this day. A 3-game improvement feels a lot better than a 2-game improvement, and 5-7...you know...we might have hoped for more but that wasn't a disaster. There were certainly growing pains, but we finished with a win and for today, that's all that could be done.
Via Todd Walker....
Samuel did not make the trip.
Jamel Martin is dinged up and not expected to start.
Pettigrew will start at RB.
Adrian Hodges has left the team.
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