Month: October 2012

New Big East Power Rankings – Week 6

On By AndyIn navy football11 Comments

Twelve of the thirteen teams in the New Big East (NBE) played this week, and ten of them won. The only losses came in league play as Rutgers downed UConn and USF lost at Temple.

Congratulations are in order for Temple for their first Big East win in a very, very long time. Their least BE win? 34-24 over Syracuse on November 13th, 2004 – not too long before they were kicked out of the league. It’s been a long road back for the Owls, and as far as I can tell, this is the first time Temple has had a winning record in Big East Conference play since beating Boston College in September 1997.

Oh, and the NBE has more ranked teams than the ACC and B1G…combined. Five power conferences my Aunt Fanny.

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This Week in Service Academy Football

On By MikeIn air farce, army3 Comments

Army (1-4): Beat Boston College, 34-31. Army had 595 yards of total offense– 516 on the ground– in winning their first game of the season. BC’s defense has been terrible all year, so despite the attention-grabbing numbers, Army’s offensive output shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. The real story from this game was the play of Army’s defense, which had been every bit as bad as BC’s. They weren’t exactly good in this game either, giving up 420 yards of offense (including a 99-yard TD run). But they were good enough. Army’s defense forced 6 punts, which is a huge win for them; as well as the Army offense is playing, they only need so many stops to be able to keep the team in the game. After Army was stopped on 4th & goal from the BC 1-yard line, the Army defense forced a 3 & out that got the ball back to the offense in great field position with 1:03 left to play. Three plays later, Trent Steelman ran 29 yards for the game winner.

Boston College is a bad football team, but the rest of Army’s schedule leading up to the Navy game isn’t exactly filled with the Monsters of the Midway. Kent State is surprising, Ball State’s offense is pretty good, and Rutgers is undefeated; still, Army should be able to move the ball on all of them. If they can get even mediocre effort out of their defense, they can head into the Navy game with a few more wins. If nothing else, the Boston College game showed that at least the winning template is there.

Air Force (2-3): Anyone catch the Air Force game this week? Did I miss anything?

SAN JOSE STATE 12, NAVY 0

On By MikeIn navy football24 Comments

Sorry for being so late on this one. Real life has been time-consuming lately.

Wags weighed in on Navy football’s recent troubles, ending his piece with this bit:

Play-calling has also been an issue as the Midshipmen seem to get further away from their true identity with each passing week. It was understandable to throw the ball quite a bit after falling behind against Notre Dame and Penn State. Having Miller repeatedly drop back against a San Jose State squad that ranked fourth nationally in sacks made no sense. Offensive coordinator Ivin Jasper called for a pass on first down three times in the first half alone on Saturday and the results were predictable — two sacks and a quarterback hurry.

Navy needs to get back to doing what made it so successful during a run of eight straight winning seasons, which means running the read triple-option. Of course, that’s easier said than done if the line can’t block it and Miller can’t read it.

After reading this, and seeing other comments here about how the Navy offense is “losing its identity” and whatnot, I think we need a little bit of Navy offense 101.

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New Big East Power Rankings – Week 5

On By AndyIn Big East, navy football4 Comments

Something was in the air this week, and I’m not talking about that fall crisp that has thankfully washed over most of the East Coast. For example:

• Washington State was within 4 of Oregon at the half.
• LSU trailed Towson and took some time to put the 1-AA team away
• West Virginia and Baylor agreed to play no defense and finished within a field goal of the D1-A scoring record set in that epic 2007 Navy-North Texas matchup.
• Georgia and Tennessee played in the highest scoring SEC contest…ever.

Point being, there were some struggles this weekend. And while those struggles certainly extended into our future conference, the cream of the conference rose to the occasion and won thier games. We enter the month of October with three undefeated teams – Louisville, Rutgers, and Cincinnati. The Coaches’ Poll has all of them ranked and adds in Boise State to give the New Big East 4 ranked teams. In the AP Poll, Cincinnati and Boise lead the “others receiving votes” category.

5 weeks into the season and we’ve pretty much defined three tiers of the conference. And for as nice at that top tier looks, the bottom tier is just as ugly. Navy, Houston, Memphis and SMU have combined for a grand total of one win over D1-A competition, thanks to Houston beating 1-win Rice this week. Yikes. As a reminder, these rankings aren’t a view of how the season will end, nor is it solely reflective of that week’s action.

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