Defensively: Gonna start here because this group played their hearts out yesterday and quite frankly, they're the reason the final score was respectable. Don't know if anyone knows this, but Indiana State has 3 guys in the FCS Top 25 in tackles. Archie and Washington are tied for 16th and Sewall is tied for 24th in the country. Obaseki and Archie are also both in the Top 100 in sacks. Additionally, I don't think anyone could argue that this group has not make significant strides since the Butler game.
Yesterday, they contained a pretty potent UNI offense. We held them under their season averages in pretty much every statistical category and only Iowa State has held them to fewer than 30 points this season when they beat UNI to start the season 20-19. This is a far cry from the 62-7 and 68-14 scores the last two times we played them at home.
Offensively: Where has the Ronnie Fouch of 2010 gone? We've all made mention about how the passing game has looked this year but we've luckily had Shakir's legs to make that a non-issue for the most part. But yesterday exposed what I think we all had know -- our passing game is a shell of it's 2010 self. I really don't understand this as we've got a senior QB in Fouch, an experienced offensive line and a wealth of receiving weapons.
Fouch should be having a field day. However, I often feel he is keying in on certain targets and making it easy on opposing defenses. For example, it seems like he goes to Alex Jones an awful lot. UNI was putting 2-3 guys in Jones zone and Fouch was picked off trying to squeeze the ball in there. If we're going to run the table, which I think we can, it is going to require Fouch to start making better decisions and throws and getting all of his targets involved.
Losing Shakir hurt. No shit, huh? That said, I would have liked to see us go with Luke/Brock instead of George after Bell went out with the concussion. I just feel like Cheese likes to dance and run sideline-to-sideline a little too much. He's a lot like Shakir in that respect, but 22 seems to sense pressure and will cut it up trying to get positive yardage. Luke appears to have our best speed/power combo, so I'm scratching my head on why he hasn't gotten more carries to at least give him a look.
Special Teams: I'm going to start out with what everyone was talking in the thread about... the kicking game. I didn't realize until I re-read the game thread (and must have missed the radio call) but Little slipped on that FG attempt and it was said it was a bad snap. We've had quite a few bad snaps this year, so I'm not entirely sure who is at fault. After Little was pulled, you had Fritschle come in and also miss a short FG, so I hope the Sycamores put a lot of emphasis on the kicking game this upcoming week in practice. Do want to give props to Tanner on his kickoffs... he was putting them through the end zone.
As for punting, I've been really impressed with Hileman. He only punted twice yesterday, but they were booming kicks and he average 49.5 yards per punt. Before he came aboard, we were ranked in the mid 30s in net punting. Since he has taken over the punting duties, we're now ranked 21st in net punting. I think the hangtime is a big reason why we've moved up the rankings in a couple weeks.
Just a couple things in general...
First off, let me preface this by stating that like many of you, I only heard the game on the radio and followed via ESPN Gamecast for stats. I'm pretty damn pissed that Sycamore Vision didn't have the feed up and running considering that this is a paid service. Further, every time I contact the support for SV, I get less than satisfactory response. If Prettyman or anyone else from the athletics office reads this, you need to improve the QoS of Sycamore Vision. You've got alumni from across the country that wanted to watch a Sycamore football game and that paid to do so that couldn't because of whatever issue was the cause of the outage.
Were there some equipment issues yesterday? In addition to Little slipping, I thought I remember hearing the radio broadcast say that quite a few of our guys slipped running routes and in defensive coverage. If so, did we have the wrong shoes for the UNI Dome surface? I remember hearing that we had the wrong shoes for the WIU game last year and that is why none of our guys could stand upright. Can anyone confirm or shed light on this?
When the next set of rankings come out, I hope to hell that we don't fall out of the Top 25 because that would be a travesty. For the sake of the program, having a ranked program going into Homecoming could do wonders to getting more asses into Memorial Stadium. What would be even better is to get a full house and then just take Western Illinois to the woodshed like we did Illinois State last year.
Yesterday, they contained a pretty potent UNI offense. We held them under their season averages in pretty much every statistical category and only Iowa State has held them to fewer than 30 points this season when they beat UNI to start the season 20-19. This is a far cry from the 62-7 and 68-14 scores the last two times we played them at home.
Offensively: Where has the Ronnie Fouch of 2010 gone? We've all made mention about how the passing game has looked this year but we've luckily had Shakir's legs to make that a non-issue for the most part. But yesterday exposed what I think we all had know -- our passing game is a shell of it's 2010 self. I really don't understand this as we've got a senior QB in Fouch, an experienced offensive line and a wealth of receiving weapons.
Fouch should be having a field day. However, I often feel he is keying in on certain targets and making it easy on opposing defenses. For example, it seems like he goes to Alex Jones an awful lot. UNI was putting 2-3 guys in Jones zone and Fouch was picked off trying to squeeze the ball in there. If we're going to run the table, which I think we can, it is going to require Fouch to start making better decisions and throws and getting all of his targets involved.
Losing Shakir hurt. No shit, huh? That said, I would have liked to see us go with Luke/Brock instead of George after Bell went out with the concussion. I just feel like Cheese likes to dance and run sideline-to-sideline a little too much. He's a lot like Shakir in that respect, but 22 seems to sense pressure and will cut it up trying to get positive yardage. Luke appears to have our best speed/power combo, so I'm scratching my head on why he hasn't gotten more carries to at least give him a look.
Special Teams: I'm going to start out with what everyone was talking in the thread about... the kicking game. I didn't realize until I re-read the game thread (and must have missed the radio call) but Little slipped on that FG attempt and it was said it was a bad snap. We've had quite a few bad snaps this year, so I'm not entirely sure who is at fault. After Little was pulled, you had Fritschle come in and also miss a short FG, so I hope the Sycamores put a lot of emphasis on the kicking game this upcoming week in practice. Do want to give props to Tanner on his kickoffs... he was putting them through the end zone.
As for punting, I've been really impressed with Hileman. He only punted twice yesterday, but they were booming kicks and he average 49.5 yards per punt. Before he came aboard, we were ranked in the mid 30s in net punting. Since he has taken over the punting duties, we're now ranked 21st in net punting. I think the hangtime is a big reason why we've moved up the rankings in a couple weeks.
Just a couple things in general...
First off, let me preface this by stating that like many of you, I only heard the game on the radio and followed via ESPN Gamecast for stats. I'm pretty damn pissed that Sycamore Vision didn't have the feed up and running considering that this is a paid service. Further, every time I contact the support for SV, I get less than satisfactory response. If Prettyman or anyone else from the athletics office reads this, you need to improve the QoS of Sycamore Vision. You've got alumni from across the country that wanted to watch a Sycamore football game and that paid to do so that couldn't because of whatever issue was the cause of the outage.
Were there some equipment issues yesterday? In addition to Little slipping, I thought I remember hearing the radio broadcast say that quite a few of our guys slipped running routes and in defensive coverage. If so, did we have the wrong shoes for the UNI Dome surface? I remember hearing that we had the wrong shoes for the WIU game last year and that is why none of our guys could stand upright. Can anyone confirm or shed light on this?
When the next set of rankings come out, I hope to hell that we don't fall out of the Top 25 because that would be a travesty. For the sake of the program, having a ranked program going into Homecoming could do wonders to getting more asses into Memorial Stadium. What would be even better is to get a full house and then just take Western Illinois to the woodshed like we did Illinois State last year.
