Lichtensteiger Named Rimington Finalist

Good for Kory. Only non-BCS player on the list.

I would love to see him be named the offensive MVP and the Team MVP. I think he's deserving.

Meet one of the most honored players in our program's history....

That's Kory Lichtensteiger. Kory was named first-team all MAC this week. That means that for each of his four years at BG, he was either first or second team All-MAC.

No debate about it. That honor alone--which comes from the people who game plan against him--makes him a historic player in our program.

You may not have noticed Kory. That's because his shotgun snaps hit Tyler Sheehan's hands with scary precision. That's because you don't hear his number called for penalties, and because he makes his blocks. He's #3 on Kiper's list of draft centers. He's the best player we have had a in a long time that no one has ever heard of.

So, first, all honors to Kory, the best football player on our team.

We had other players get some honors, too. Now, believe it or not, we had 8 players on the All-MAC teams, and Western Michigan had 10.......big ol' WTF on that one. Anyhow, here's the rest of the honored Falcons:

First-team:

Senior center Kory Lichtensteiger
Junior defensive end Diyral Briggs.

Second team:

Senior Tackle Drew Nystrom
Soph Safety P.J. Mahone.

Third Team:

Soph QB Tyler Sheehan
Soph WR Freddie Barnes
Jr. K Sinia Vrvilo
Jr. CB Antonio Smith

Nice job, Guys. A few notes:

• Coach Brandon was third in coach of the year voting. Its hard to argue with Turner Gill making Buffalo into a contender.
• I can only quibble a little with one pick. It seems like Kenny Lewis--who is a big play guy, might have fit in here. But, Antonio Smith is a good cover guy.
• The combined person John Haneline/Glen Stanley should have been All-MAC
• I like the number of sophomores we have getting honors. A lot.

GMAC Update from The Blade

GMAC WILL WAIT: The GMAC Bowl likely will not choose its representatives until after Saturday's MAC championship, according to executive director Frank Modarelli. A 17-member selection committee met Monday night but did not come to a conclusion, much to the disappointment of Modarelli.

"It makes things a lot easier the earlier you get them," Modarelli said. "I wish they would have made a decision [Monday] but they didn't."

If you want my uninformed opinion, at least some people on the committee are holding out hope of getting Miami. No other reason to wait.....

Blog Poll Unofficial

Apparently, the blog poll is having problems with its server. But, I'm going to post my rankings anyway, if for no other reason so I have something to work off next week for the final pre-bowl week.

1. West Virginia
   
2. Missouri
3. Ohio State
4. Kansas
5. LSU
6. USC
7. Georgia
8. Oklahoma
9. Boston College
10. Virginia Tech
11. Arizona State
12. Florida
13. Oregon
    
14. Illinois
15. Clemson
16. Tennessee
    
17. Wisconsin
18. Hawaii
19. Texas
    
20. Cincinnati
21. Virginia
22. Arkansas
23. Auburn
24. Texas Tech
25. Brigham Young
    

Out: Boise, Kentucky

Falcons Beat Furman

The Basketball team continued to pick up wins, beating a winless Furman team in South Carolina yesterday by nine points. Some observations:

This team beat us last year on our floor. With the shape our program is in, we will take wins everywhere we can get them.

• We jumped to an 18 point lead at halftime, primarily because we shot 63% and they shot 20%. Things evened out in the second half and Furman outscored us, but couldn't come back.
• Our 3 point woes continued (3-11)
• 20 fouls, 12 turnovers.
• Hamblet had 13, with Miller and Knight scoring 12 each.
• We won the rebounding battle 37-32, but gave up 11 offensive boards.
• Otis had 9 points, 2 blocks and 6 boards in 15 minutes. I wonder why he doesn't play more.
• In all, we had 10 blocked shots.
• Coach Orr talked about a key sequence in the first half, where we essentially got 12 straight stops. If you can combine that with some shooting, you are hard to beat.

Coach Orr talks about how we have to win even when we don't shoot well. I'd have to check, but I don't think we've been able to pull that off yet. Still, Furman shot 32% for the game and 4-18 from the 3. It is hard to lose when you can do that. We were able to use a man defense to go and cover the 3s.

Falcons are 4-2 so far. We have Oakland Saturday, and team that has also beaten us in recent years. One game at a time, as we build up to the MAC, which will be the tougher portion of our schedule.

Busy days in the FalconBlog

Dang, it just keeps coming, All-MAC football teams, and the hoops team picks up a road win at Furman last night. More later.

Bowl Game Speculation------Updated.....

Quick note for a Tuesday. Presser review is upcoming, but there's not much to talk about, really.

According to media reports, each of the three MAC bowls is in play. Based on speculation and uninformed opinion, here is what I see....

CMU will end up in the Motor City Bowl. Don't see this changing.
The scuttlebutt around the program is that we are headed to the GMAC Bowl. For my own selfish reasons, I hope that is not true, but time will tell.

My hope will be the Miami would beat CMU, be bowl eligible, and head to Mobile with their better traveling team and well heeled alumni. We then go to Toronto.

If CMU beats Miami, then I suspect we go to Mobile and Ball State goes to Toronto.

Of course, we could go to Mobile and Miami to Toronto, too.

Not complaining...a bowl game is huge for our program. At this point, it looks like Mobile. One nice thing about that game is that the game is everything in that town for the days before the game. You don't get that in Toronto or Detroit, where its just another game. You get a real bowl environment in Mobile.

Apparently if we go to Mobile, its Tulsa, which will be a nice match up for us. If we play in Toronto, that would be Rutgers or South Florida--again, a really good challenge for the team. You hate to make the bowl game and have to play the Sun Belt conference.

Time will tell. We are supposed to know this weekend.

Update: The Blade now indicates that the GMAC is the choice.