Men's Basketball Injury News in The Blade

A couple of injury notes from the "pages" of today's Blade...

First, Craig Sealey is out.  He had knee surgery in the off-season and is a wait and see situation.  The Blade says there is a "possibility" he might redshirt this season.

Second, freshman Zach Denny, who is an outside shooting threat, is also injured and is not expected to play "early" in the season, whatever that might mean.

Benchmark Report....RedHawk version

So here are the benchmark reports for the Miami game.  Not a huge number of surprises.  BG was very efficient on offense, ahead of all the yard per plays measures.  Amazingly enough, with 71 plays from scrimmage, BG ran only 9 3rd down plays...and converted 67% of them.  Hard to lose that way, and even more so when you are as effective in the red zone as BG is.  In fact, the only fly in BG's ointment was negative passing plays--giving up 4 sacks and 1 INT in 35 attempts.

On the other side, Miami turned the ball over a lot, and with sacks included, their yards per pass attempt were even lower than their yards per rush.  With those numbers, it is not too surprising that they did not get into the red zone.  Finally, it gives you an idea how poor their passing game is when you see that they run the ball as much as they do, even when they are not good at it and behind.

Earlham Preview

So, BG starts their men's basketball season Saturday with a game against Earlham.  You might not know too much about Earlham--I didn't--so here's some basic info.

• DIII, plays in the Heartland College Athletic Conference with Defiance and Bluffton, among others.
• Their nickname is the Quakers.
• School was founded in 1847.
• It is in Richmond, IN.
• There are about 1,200 undergraduates at the school.
• They were 4-21 last year and are picked to finish last in their conference.
• I don't see where they played a DI game last year, but apparently this is an exhibition game for them, so maybe it wouldn't show up.
• Their tallest player is 6'6" but his name is Kirk Douglas.

Essentially, I can't see us learning very much about the Falcons from this game.  The Quakers should not be able to compete or even hang around with the Falcons...

Clawson Presser

No real news yesterday...he said some nice things about BG's seniors, who are playing their final home game on Tuesday.  They were 2-10 their first year at BG, and apparently there were bad influences in the locker room trying to distract them away from football, but they stuck with it and are, we hope, working toward a big reward this year.

The other thing was more on the funny side.  Coach Clawson was diplomatic when he was asked about the awful call on the Tettleton intentional grounding, and then went on to say that it is philosophy that you have to let bad calls go right away and move on to the next thing.

I was like, REALLY?  I mean, I love Coach and he has done a great job here and I think he represents the university very well....having said that, I have never seen a coach with more stamina in arguing with the officials than Clawson.  Honestly, I think the line judge goes home with Clawson's voice ringing in his ears.  Sometimes, a play is more than 30 minutes old and a time out is called and he's STILL working the officials on the call.  Let it go right away?  I cannot imagine that's what he is doing.

He says he was worse when he was young; that must have been something to see.

OU-Buffalo....WHA Happen?

So, for quite a while we have been pointing to Tuesday's game against OU as the game which would determine the East champion.  Coming into Buffalo game, OU seemed to be rolling.  They had clubbed EMU and Miami, smoked an underrated Akron team.  They had only 2 losses and one of those was to Louisville.

Meanwhile, you were starting to sense that Buffalo might be better than expected, but this was also a team that took 5 OT to beat Stony Brook and was 4-0 in MAC play, but those were over EMU, WMU, UMass, and Kent...so there was no real impressive victory in there.  So, I thought Buffalo might have a shot at OU but I didn't think they would win 30-3.  And you didn't either.

The game was only 7-3 Buffalo at halftime.  Early in the 3rd, OU was victimized by what might well be the worst call I've ever seen in a college football game.  Tettleton was called for intentional grounding in the end zone--a safety--but was, in fact, on the FOUR YARD LINE and right in front of the referee when he committed the foul.

The MAC has issued a statement admitting two mistakes which were unfavorable to OU, the other a fumble in the first half. On the safety, the referee claimed he was looking downfield when the pass was thrown--which is not what he was supposed to be doing and not what he appears to be doing--and he saw Tettleton lying in the end zone and assumed the penalty took place in the end zone.  As you can see, he was behind Tettleton and he wasn't even in the end zone.

Officials make a lot of tough calls under the non-human scrutiny of instant replay and sometimes that isn't fair.  This is not that case.

Buffalo was now up 9-3, took the free kick and marched it in to go up 16-3 and from there the rout was on as the Bulls scored and scored.

Solich said--and he's right--that the game did not come down to one play.  Braden Oliver ran the ball 34 times for 249 yards--an effort right out of the 1970s--and Buffalo scored 31 points while completing 13 passes.  Meanwhile, OU got no rushing game at all and Tettleton was 14 of 31 passing for only 126 yards...a QB rating of 15.

It changes the dynamic big time.  First, it casts huge doubt on OU...and they were looking pretty good.  From a Falcon perspective, you have to wonder which OU team will show up Tuesday.  Will it be the OU we thought we had, looking to rewrite this debacle--or will it be an OU team fading late, as they have sometimes done.

Second, it makes the BG-Buffalo game potentially of huge importance the day after Thanksgiving.  Buffalo has followed the trend and moved the game off-campus, something I suspect they will regret if the whole thing does come down to that game.

Buffalo has zero conference losses, but plays Toledo next week.  They don't need that game, so long as they beat BG, but it will be a good chance to see if they can sustain what they showed on Tuesday.

If BG wins out, they would win the East, and Buffalo can win only beating Miami and BG.

The more interesting scenario would come with BG losing to OU and beating EMU and Buffalo, Buffalo losing to UT and BG and OU beating BG, Kent and UMass, leaving all 3 teams with 2 losses.

The head to head is even and all the teams lost to each other in division and their other loss would be outside division, so that tie breaker is even too.  This takes us to the third tiebreaker, which is the winning percentage of your crossover opponents.  This involves UT, EMU, CMU, and WMU, some of whom play each other, but if things play out as expected, BG would probably win this tie-breaker.  Hat tip to Bull Run for doing the heavy lifting here and I welcome anyone who thinks this is figured wrong.

So, if your question was "Can BG win the East without beating OU" the answer is yes.  I think.

Sweet Victory #6 The Recap

So, recapping BG's record-breaking 45-3 victory over the Miami RedHawks....the first quarter was actually pretty even.  In fact, when you speak of slow starts...uh, OK, maybe not.

But Miami did get the opening kick and start from its own 17 before driving to the Falcon 30.  The lowest scoring team in FBS had a 3rd down and 6 when Paul Senn dropped Kummer for a 14 yard loss and the RedHawks punted.

The Falcon offense did not have a slow start.  BG got first downs on its first 5 plays from scrimmage before Johnson hit Joplin for a 6 yard TD.

The Miami offense moved the ball again when they got it back.  This time they drove to the BG 26 before losing 7 yards on a fumble and then kicked a 51 yd FG to to 7-3.

BG marched right back down the field on a 13 play drive that ate up 6:40.  On a 3rd down play, Burbrink caught the ball in the end zone.  It was called a TD and reversed with replay, so BG added a FG of its own and led 10-3.

Miami then became, well, Miami, fumbling on their 2nd play from scrimmage.  BooBoo had one of two fumble recoveries he would have in the game, BG started on the 29 and four plays later William Houston was in the end zone and BG was up 17-3 and the rout was pretty much on.

BG had good kick coverage, forcing the RedHawks to start at their own 13.  They drove to the 35 before punting.  BG started on its own 31 with 3:36 left in the 2Q.  The Falcons ran a 9 play drive over 2:17 with 5 first downs and ending with a Johnson-Bayer connection for the TD and 24-3 lead.

The 3Q was not much better.  Miami fumbled the first time they had the ball and BG drove 61 yards in 10 plays, ending with a Matt Johnson 1 yard run to go 31-3 and then on the next play from scrimmage they fumbled again and BooBoo ran it in and BG was up 38-3.  BG's final score came on their next possession with Chris Pohlman rumbled his way into the end zone from 38 yards out.

For the game, Miami had 16 first downs.  Almost half (7) came after BG had 45 points.

Everything was as one-sided as it would appear.  BG had 6.3 yards per play while Miami had 3.7 yards per play.  Miami never entered the red zone in the entire game, had 3 TOs and gave up 4 sacks.  BG had 30 first downs while Miami had only 16.  It was domination for BG on both sides of the ball.

And, as I said this morning, yes, Miami is terrible.  Still, BG did what you do with a terrible team...dominate them.

Travis Greene rushed for 112 yards on 14 carries, which is over 8 yards per carry.  That puts him over 1,000 yards on the season, the first BG 1,000 yard rusher since PJ Pope.  Coppet had 46 yards in 9 carries, which was also very good.  Ronnie Moore had two nice runs...etc.

Matt Johnson was very efficient, completing 20 of 26 for 252 yards and 3 TDS over 1 interception.  He used a number of receivers.  Burbrink, Joplin and Jackson had 4 receptions each and Bayer added 3.

So, that's the story.  BG got the effort they needed.  I think the question is this...did BG get a glimpse of how the year could have ended and reach for a new level of play?  Or, was this just a BG team beating up on a limping foe?  BG now has 3 games left...one with OU and one with Buffalo.  BG is going to need all 3 to win the East (probably).  OU was killed by Buffalo yesterday, so will arrive in BG a wounded team as well.  It is going to be a very interesting night.

Important to remember:  it is not too late for BG to put it all together.

Sweet Victory #6

So for everyone who has been saying BG had yet to have a convincing, wire to wire victory...for everyone who didn't want to see us need a big 3rd Quarter to put an inferior opponent away...and for everyone who wondered how the team would react to the disappointing day against UT...last night was an answer.

In what was the biggest BG win in the Miami series--and in what had to be an absolutely miserable night to be in Oxford--BG stomped on the RedHawks 45-3, leading 24-3 at halftime and adding 21 3rd Quarter points on the way to the romp.

Miami's only points came on a 51 yard FG.

I know....Miami is a bad team in a bad place.  You're supposed to win like this against teams like this, and BG did.

Matt Johnson had a good day--20-26 for 252 yards and 3 TDS...1 INT and 3 sacks.  Travis Greene added 8 yards a carry and Coppet added 5.1 yards per carry.

The defense--playing the first time since Martin's season-ending injury--held Miami to 3.7 yards per play.  BG recovered 3 fumbles and had 4 sacks.  Boo Boo Gates ran one of the fumbles in for what was BG's first defensive touchdown of the season.

More to come....BG ends up bowl eligible and is now 6-3.  The shocking news came from the other half of the division, where Buffalo just annihilated OU.  BG plays OU and Buffalo coming home and it looks almost certain that three wins in three games will be needed to play at Ford Field.