New Falcon Football Verbal, Dirion Hutchins

I'm blessed to announce that I have committed to University of Bowling Green!Proud to be a part of the falcon family! pic.twitter.com/ZaTrMuhxiU

— Dirion (@DirionHutchins9) May 30, 2015

BG has a new football verbal.  It is Dirion Hutchins, a DE from Francis Howell HS in St. Charles, MO.  He appears to be have played strong-side at Howell, but according to Yahoo projects to a weak-side DE in college.  We shall see.  He doesn't have any starts from them, but that isn't something I tend to get too worked up about here.  You need players who can fit a system and you need a bunch of them.  Talk to me in five years.

According to Yahoo, he's 6'2" and 215 pounds.  (Could also translate to LB at BG).  Anyway, he had one offer he had only one other FBS offer--from Ball State--to go with a number of FCS offers.

Yahoo says he had a 5-something 40 yard dash, which is a little surprising given that you can see he ran a 25.4 200m in HS track.  He had a 9'5" standing broad jump, which seems to be good based on this article. 

He also wrestled.  On this blog, we like guys who play multiple sports.

We also like productivity.  As a JR, Hutchins played on a REALLY good team.  They were 11-1 with a 513-116 score differential.  Hutchins was 13th in his conference in tackles (with 61) and 4th in sacks with 5.

Welcome to the Falcons, Dirion.

MAC Men's Basketball Tournament Returns to Original Format

Heeding the wishes (according to this story in the Plain Dealer) of its coaches, the MAC Men's Basketball program is abandoning the current tournament format and moving to a more traditional one.

Currently, the top 2 teams get a bye to the semi finals and the next two teams get a bye to the quarterfinal.  The Bottom 8 teams play two rounds before they meet one of the top four seeds.

The new format will be what was for many years the traditional format.  Four byes, but only into the quarter final.

I might have been the only person who liked the "super bye" format the way it was.  It created huge drama in the end of the regular season, meaningfully rewarded teams for excelling in the regular season and helped (in theory) ensure that the tournament produced the MAC's best team for the NCAAs.

The stated criticism in the story is a fair one:  when you have a close season, as you did this year, you have incredibly significant seeding decisions being made based on tie breakers that slice increasingly thinly the deeper they get.  The MAC had a three-way tie for first and one of those teams was going to be at a disadvantage.

And while the same could happen when separating a #5 seed from a #4 seed under the system that will be in place next year, the impact isn't as great.

I think the unstated reason is that every coach wants to be able to save their season in the tournament and this made that a lot harder. Under the system we are going to, you can spread the wealth a little, which is good for Coaches under pressure to succeed.

On the plus side, this does set up the tournament for a Cinderella run, and when OU made a run of that kind, they ended up winning a game in the NCAA.  My bias is always to weight things toward the regular season, which is the best test of which team is best, but that's clearly out of step with the way the world is viewing things.

Baberdocio

ba·ber·do·ci·o

noun

noun: braggadocio

1. boastful and outlandish statements from a Midwest Football Coach

Just a couple check-in posts this week...first with football.  This is a very different off-season than last year, when we feel in for a massive, high-profile hype campaign about Falconfast that included videos showing the coach changing all the speed limit signs, etc.  As the defending champions, there were high expectations.

Of course, those expectations were not met.  The team went from the best team in the MAC to the 4th or 5th best team in the MAC...from 3rd in the MAC in scoring offense to 8th, from 1st in the MAC in scoring defense to 8th, all while losing all our cross-over games and taking the worst defeat in the history of the MAC title game.

I predicted that the off-season would be quieter and I think I was right.  And I think that was the right way to go.

After the last off-season...the manic press conference following the Indiana win, then the excuse-making, insincere reasons for why coaches were moved, etc, people were not going to be in the mood for more Baberdocio.  They were going to be in the mood to see results.

I thought about that again when I saw a report on AZZ.com on the Falcon promotional caravan around Ohio.  Babers is reported to have said:

• The defense will be better because of the new DC he hired.
• We have the best backup QB in the country.
• The offense will be electric
• The only rookie in the offense is the QB

Those are good examples.  Just to run them down in order:

• If they are, given the losses they have, he is a genius and it will be far and away the biggest thing he has done in coaching
• No comment
• It better be
• And if Johnson isn't good we have a ready-made excuse ready

Anyway, the point is I think we are immune to the jabber right now.  Let's see it work.

One thing he is reported to say that I agree with is when he urged fans from outside the immediate area to focus on the three Saturday home games for attending, and not to worry too much about the weeknight games, which are hard to do if you are out of town.  I thought that was a smart piece of marketing.

BG with QB Verbal

H/T to Hustle Belt and Ken (in comments) for this one....BG has another verbal and this one is a QB.

His name is Elijah Cunningham, though he looks more like Richie Cunningham.  He is a '16 recruit and a pro-style QB from Springboro, OH.  Springboro is between Dayton and Cincinnati.

He is a highly rated recruit.  Rivals gives him 2-stars and ESPN gives him 3-stars.  He certainly has the right size, at 6'3" and 177 pounds.  As a junior, he was named to the All-Area 2nd team and all-District 2nd team.

His junior stats line is pretty good.  He completed 59% of his passes for a 14.2 yards per completion average and 22 TDs over 7 INT.  His QB rating was 153.   He only attempted about 22 passes per game, so it was not a pass-heavy offense.  They were 9-2 for the year.

There seems to be a lot of interest in him, but his only other reported offer was Akron.  ESPN's scouting report says he has the arm strength to make all the throws and is a smart QB who understands defenses.  He is mobile in the pocket.  Remember, BG doesn't really look for dual-threat QBs under the Babers regime.

Looks like a very interesting player for us.  As last year showed, you can't have too many QBs.  I have a hunch this young man hasn't heard the last from recruiters.

New Falcon Football Verbal...

H/T to Hustle Belt for this one....

BG has its 3rd verbal for the 2016 class.  This one is from Terence Stephens, a two-way player from Imperial HS in West Allegheny PA.  That's in the western part of the Pittsburgh metro area...and you know how this blog feels about football players from the Pittsburgh area.

He was a very productive player as a Junior....again from Hustle Belt.

Stephens finished his junior year with 912 yards and 14 touchdowns on the ground while also accounting for over 50 total tackles and two sacks on defense to help lead the Indians to an overall record of 11-2.

The assumption seems to be he's going to get to play on offense, but the defense stuff is great for special teams work, which is always important.  He was one of the Post-Gazette's top 25 2016 players and was on the Pennsylvania Scholastic Football Coach's Association top 2016 recruits list.

He played on a really good team last year-they were 11-2--and the Coach at West Allegheny is Bob Palko, who has been there a long time and whose son was QB for the Panthers.

In today's football, you can't have too many RBs, so welcome to the Falcons, Terence.

Falcons Net First Two Football Verbals

So, BG has its first two football verbals.  It might seem late, but you don't really see us getting many verbals until now...in fact, it is a little bit early, as far as that goes.  Two things here.  Coach Babers alluded to this in his signing day presser, but from what I hear he has a very different recruiting style.  He likes to get to know the players very well...the players and their families.  This makes the process slower, but hopefully more effective and yielding players who are good fits for the program.  We shall see on that.

The other thing is that most of the teams in the MAC have a small number of verbals right now.  The exception, of course, would be the Kalamazoo Boat Rowers who have 13 verbals already, with 2 decommits.  We shall see about that, too, but Fleck's early results are good, for sure.

For BG, the recruiting season started with Kyree Calli, a 2-star WR from Bishop McDevitt HS in Harrisburg, fondly remembered as the HS home of BG's championship QB, Matt Johnson.  He looks to be a nice fit for our offense, at 6'4" and just a nudge under 200 pounds.  He was very productive as a JR, catching 36 passes for 10 TDs and 20 yards per reception on a team that went 14-1.

According to his profile, he was also an all-Mid Penn WR as a junior.  He had interest from a number of schools, including Ohio and Buffalo.  The bias here is FOR players from Pennsylvania, and Calli would appear to be a great fit.  (Update:  Here is a PennLive article about Cali.)

The other player is Sharif Saleem, a DE from Cleveland Central Catholic.  He's tall...6'7" and therefore an imposing pass rusher, either from the edge or blocking lanes in the middle of the line.  He's not heavy--210 pounds based on what I found online--but there's time to build that out once he gets here.  His stats only show him playing 3 games last year, but he transferred from Cleveland Heights, so that could have played a role or maybe the stats are wrong.

Anyway, welcome to the Falcons, Kyree and Sharif.

Happy Mother's Day to the Falcon Nation

Here's our newest Falcon Mom.  Be nice to your Mom today.  She was nice to you and it wasn't always clear why.