Navy Notables – 12/23/14

On By AndyIn navy football5 Comments

Good morning.  It’s gameday, so we’re gonna keep this one really short.

Navy men’s basketball picked up a big win over Towson last night after having lost 4 of their prior 5 games.  The game saw the return of Worth Smith to the lineup, who had been out since the opening game against Michigan State with a knee injury.  His impact was immediate and substantial.  Smith had 13 points in the first half en route to 20 for the game.  He also added 9 rebounds and 2 blocks in 28 minutes of play.  Brandon Venturini also had a big game with 19 points.  Defensively, Navy held Towson to just 29% shooting from the field.  Navy will open Patriot League play on New Year’s Eve when they host Loyola at 4pm.

Mid-morning update:

The final tally: 10,800 ticket sold, including 7,000 donated.  BZ, tell your squad leader.

Quick hits:

  • Over at SI.com, Nelson Rice has a great piece on Keenan Reynolds.  It weaves interviews with parents and coaches through his performance at the Army-Navy game this year.
  • If you need some doom and gloom to get you in the right mindset for tonight, you can go read a couple of stories about how Rocky Long has fared against Navy and Air Force.

#BeatSDSU

Navy Notables – 12/21/14

On By AndyIn navy football6 Comments

Good Morning!  We’re about 36 hours from kickoff for the Poinsettia Bowl (9:30pm EST on the 23rd).  I hope everyone either took the 24th off or has some 5 Hour Energy ready for the next morning.  Let’s get to the news.

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Navy Notables – 12/19/14

On By AndyIn navy football3 Comments

Good morning – we’re less than a week away from Christmas, so that means we’re just days away from the bowl game!  If you can’t go, you can still donate tickets.  As of Wednesday night, the Navy Athletics Facebook page reported that we have ticket donations from each of the 50 states and are less than 1,000 away from selling 10,000 total tickets to the game.  That’s really something.  The fact that Navy’s fan base continues to gobble up tickets to bowl games is a major reason why Chet and company were able to consistently line up bowl games while we were an independent.  And it’s a big reason why Navy will always be in the running for the most attractive American bowls in the future.

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Navy Notables – 12/15/14

On By AndyIn navy footballLeave a comment

Sir, there are 362 days until Navy beats Army to make it 14 in ’15, Sir!

Good morning!  I hope everyone has recovered from watching the Army-Navy game this weekend.  It was a fantastic outing in Baltimore – one that I can not wait to repeat in 2016.  Don’t get me wrong, the Linc is a fantastic venue for the game.  But I do love the ease of getting in to Baltimore and home in one relatively short day.  Having College Gameday there made it all that much better.  FYI, if you were at the game and forgot to record Gameday, you can still catch it archived on watchESPN.  Also, if you were at the game, you may have missed the tease that lead in to the broadcast on CBS.  Go watch it now – it was great as always.

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ARMY WEEK: MONKEN’S MAGNUM OPUS

On By MikeIn army-navy, navy football8 Comments

Football commentary from national outlets, for the most part, sucks. Whether in print or over-the-air, discussion of the game consists primarily of clichés and conventional wisdom regurgitation being passed off as insight. There’s a reason for this. It’s hard enough to be knowledgeable and detailed when discussing one program. When there’s over 100 in the entire FBS, there’s no way anyone can speak with authority on all of them. The talking heads can’t tell their audience that, of course, so instead they give us talking points. It doesn’t matter how true they are; they just have to make you sound smart. Repeat them enough, and they’ll be accepted as fact.

When you’re a fan of an option football team, you’re quite familiar with the talking points. Tell me if you’ve heard this before:

*clears throat*

“Defending this offense is all about assignment football. You need one man on the dive, one man on the quarterback, and one man on the pitch. And you need to hit the quarterback on every play. If you do that, you can get them off schedule, and this offense isn’t built for 3rd & long. It’s not a quick-strike offense, so if you get an early lead you can force them to throw the ball, which isn’t their strength. It’s not an offense designed to come from behind.”

Yeah, we might’ve heard that once or twice or every day.

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