When you have a team like Ohio Wesleyan on your schedule, you are supposed to beat them easily. And BG did.101-60. BG burst out to a big early lead and never looked back.
Next up is Ohio State on Monday, BG's toughest challenge of the season.
Normally, Coach Loeffler's pressers are not that interesting. He mostly just rolls with coachspeak and rarely reveals anything happening with the team other than general platitudes...the main exception being the one or two times he completely lost his shit.
Anyway, today he had something more interesting to say.
"We need to get bigger and we need to get stronger. We need to fill our holes with some guys to make our team better. We made a decision to not go down the 14-15 players transfer portal like a lot of teams did. We did that for a reason. We needed to make sure we had a foundation of local football players on our team to establish some kind of culture, but we've got a good locker room now and now it's to time to fill our holes, get big and strong and to compete for championships."
He says this has been "the formula from the git-go" and that he is following the Clawson model. He checked himself about the championships and said "it's time."
Coach Clawson certainly did use transfers. David Kekuewa, Kamar Jorden, Paul Senn...he did fill holes selectively with transfer players.
I'm guessing we're doing to be a little less selective than that, if we are going this route. And that's what I read into what he is saying. My count has us with 8 players who have verbally committed, and I think we might bring in a much larger number of transfers who can play right away.
We saw the impact it made on the defense. Imagine the impact a couple of o-line transfers might have made--though there were only 1-2 incoming OL transfers in our conference.
He knows we need to compete next year. If this is a five-year plan we can't be 3-9 next year. Plenty of people don't trust the process, but we can all agree that the process was to eventually win and I think he realizes it needs to happen at some level next year. If it doesn't get turned around, we're going to end up just starting over again.
In fairness, he has always said he wanted to build a real culture before he started to bring in transfers. He says the culture in the locker room is good now. Fair enough...he's going to live or die on that, so he better be right.
I also don't honestly believe he ever thought he was going to need to bring in a larger influx of transfers for year 4...but if it wasn't clear before the UT game it is now. As he said after the game, that's how good we need to get. Or better, since UT won't be playing in the MAC title game.
Also, the transfer game is much different than it was when he started. The fact is, it's a much bigger part of the game now. And they aren't all problem players, which was true back when no one transferred.
I have nothing against Matt McDonald, but I do hope one of the transfers is a QB who can push McDonald...that QB apparently is not on the roster right now.
It will be interesting to see, but that's something I didn't expect him to be so direct about. We will all keep our eyes on the news to see if players are coming to BG via transfer who can "fill holes."
One last thing. Let's not skip the stronger. I recall after the 2011 season Clawson said a similar thing. We needed to get stronger. And we did. You could see it. The guys who do have will need to have epic work in the weight room. Problem is, Loeffler said we needed to get stronger last year, and we're still talking about it.
Stay tuned.
So, Diata Burns is in the portal. He was a transfer last year, started all five games. He actually entered the portal in the off-season and then was persuaded to return. He played in 5 games this year and DNP in the last two, presumably leading to his portal decision. His twitter shows a couple offers from DII schools.
Best of luck to Diata.
(h/t: first saw this on azz.com)
Quick preview on Ohio Wesleyan for Friday....
They are DIII and play in the North Coast Athletic Conference, where they were picked to finish 6th this year. Last year, they were 6-6 and they were 12-14 the year before that.
They have five starters and 3 additional contributors back from last year's team.
They played an opener Tuesday and lost 61-56, after a furious rally. Henry Hinkle and Grant Spicer scored 14 in the loss with Spicer adding 9 rebounds.
Hinkle is a freshman.
Their coach is Mike DeWitt and he has been there 23 years. A Battling Bishop alum, he had them winning conference titles five years ago.
On offense, UT completely controlled the line of scrimmage. Absent a few Terion Stewart runs (which UT eventually sorted out), BG could not run the ball. UT had everyone close to the line of scrimmage, daring McDonald to go over the top, which he couldn't do because everything he did with any kind of drop back resulted in an onslaught of Rocket lineman. The short passes were thrown in the teeth of the Rocket defense and went nowhere. Entering the 4th Q, BG had 66 yards of total offense.
On the other side, BG was also overwhelmed on the line of scrimmage. They started out getting some stops but eventually UT just took over.and finished with 539 yards total offense against a defense that started the season as a pleasant surprise. (Note that BG was playing without Bryce Brand and Davon Ferguson, two impact transfers.)
There was a brief moment when it appeared to be a game. Candle had gone for it on 4th down in his own territory--which was idiotic--and BG had gotten the stop and scored their only meaningful touchdown.
The defense got a stop and then UT shanked its punt and BG had a short field again. They drove to the redzone and took a virtually uncontested 11-yard sack leading to a Nate Needham 47 yard FG.
So it is 14-10. BG gets a stop and it isn't feeling too bad...but due to a personal foul BG starts on their own 5 after the UT punt.
The next sequence is as bad as it can be. (Note that UT is getting the ball to start the second half).
BG gets out to the 25 but gives up a 3rd down sack and punts. UT starts on their 46. 4:30 left in the half. UT scores in 3 plays, less than one minute. 21-10.
On the UT kickoff, BG commits a personal foul and starts on its own 12. 3:34 left to play. First down false start, Steward loses 6 on third down. BG punts, UT starts on their own 41. 2:32 left to play.
UT scores on a one-play 59-yard TD pass. 28-10.
BG has the kickoff on its own 21. Falcons go 3 and out, including a sack, and UT uses time outs, so only :26 elapses.
After BG's punt, UT has the ball on their 35 with 1:32 left...which they cover in 4 plays in a :37 drive to go up 35-10.
THERE IS STILL OVER 1 MINUTE LEFT!
BG is able to finally run the clock out, but the game is over. To cap it off, UT takes the second half opening kickoff and goes 75 yards in 11 plays, aided by a pass interference call, and made it 42-10.
It was as dreadful a 10-minute segment of football as we have had. A defense giving up big plays, one after another, and an offense unable to stay on the field.
Here's what Loeffler said:
“This is the first time this year that I could sit here and say that we were physically beaten in every phase of the game. We lost up front on both sides of the ball. Defensively we couldn’t stop the run, and then offensively we couldn’t get into our game plan whatsoever. We were facing a three-man rush taking sacks. They [Toledo] did a great job. They’ve done a great job recruiting, no question about it. They have big, strong guys, and we’ve got to catch them.”
There was one point I looked down on the call sheet and wondered which one we wanted to call.
It was an absolutely awful night...and he didn't even mention the stupid penalties.
Short week to Oxford on Tuesday. Miami is playing to set up a one-game showdown with Kent.
Well, the opener turned out to be a tough start for BG's MBB team. A lot of new faces, looking to March, etc....but Western Carolina had a lot of new faces, too. This is one where we got a look at where we are right now and the distance to where we need to be. That doesn't mean we can't get there.
But it was a rough performance. BG went the first 6 minutes of the game without a FG, and trailed 14-3. Over the next 8 minutes, they got it back to 1, but the Catamounts took the game back over, stretching the lead back to 10 and leading by 8 at the half.
BG played better in the second half. They took the lead for the first time about 7 minutes in. BG took the lead with 7 minutes left and did not relinquish it in the regulation. They didn't really stretch it either.
BG got a 2FG from Joe Reece to take a 2-point lead with 1:02 left. Then, WCU took some time to shoot and BG got a stop as Diggs cleared the board. BG was up 2 with :39 left and the ball. There's a 90% chance that BG wins the game. They decide to run clock, which makes total sense, but when the time comes they execute nothing and Gordon misses a jacked-up 3FG. A basket late in the shot clock there and the game is over.
WCU has a shot...and it worked, because when they came down to try and tie the game BG's defense parted the way for them and the Catamounts ended up with an uncontested layup, right out of a pre-game drill.
Having lost that opportunity to win, BG found the rest to be an ugly experience, with WCU winning the OT 11-3.
It was a pretty ugly game. Nobody shot well, there were 34 turnovers and 41 fouls. It looked like a season-opener. For all that, it was there to be won and it was not.
BG was OK from 2FG, with 50%, which is about the national average. Problem was that 34 of BG's 74 FG attempts came from 3FG (46%) and BG made only 5 of those 34 shots. Add in a not-great turnover rate, average offensive rebounding and average FTs and you have nothing to pull those numbers up and you end up with .83 points per possession.
The last time BG shot worse from 3 than that was...their last MAC game against Akron in Cleveland. The last time BG won a game with this kind of offensive output was the 2013 EMU game (46-44) which was forgettable yet unforgettable.
WCU had .93 points per possession, which also isn't great. They had a very similar mix of 2FGs and 3FGs...and made only 38% of their 2FGs but 35% of their 3FGs went in. They had a strong game on the offensive boards and got to the line more. Had they made better than 55% at the line, the game would not have been close.
The other interesting thing is the rotation. BG had 11 guys play 10 minutes or more. And that's with Fields and Matiss not in action.
We will accordingly have to watch individual stats, because no one is going to put up big numbers under this scenario.
BG had 2 double-doubles...Plowden at 18/13 and Reece at 10/12. Plowden was 5-16 shooting, missing 8 3FGs, so the scoring was inefficient. Reece was 5 of 6 shooting and double-doubled in 25 minutes.
Diggs and Matheny had rough nights, combining for 2-14 from the field and 7 turnovers. That's OK, we know those guys can play. I saw moments out of everyone I liked. Samari Curtis showed the ability to create opportunities and pass the ball. Gabe O'Neal had some good minutes. He finished effectively at the rim. I thought Fulcher made some plays. Obviously, no one made enough shots, but there were some moments where our guys stood out.
Is this rotation going to work? Will players ever get into enough rhythm to be able to score? Will everyone stay happy? Time will tell.
One thing is that BG has been under .85 points per possession in their last 3 games...those games being notable for being without Justin Turner. If you recall the Stetson game in the tournament last year, it was ugly. Good players looked like they had landed on an unfamiliar planet. Justin was a great player and he had a role on the team. I think it is possible the Falcons are just struggling to see how it all fits together. Turner made everyone else better and took the effort on his shoulders. It should be interesting to watch this unfold.
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