Dukes Eke By Tribe in Double OT
Phew! The Dukes dodged a massive bullet yesterday thanks in large part to three missed FG’s by William & Mary, including a chip shot for the win at the end of regulation. Personally, I’m fairly certain that kid saved me from hating sports entirely for a while on the heels of Friday night’s game that shall not be named.
The Good
Missed FG's: Gifts from the pantsless Griffin
A win is a win. For the second straight week, JMU held serve at home by overcoming extremely inconsistent play, especially on offense, and pulled out another dramatic victory. We’ve both noticed that while certain things drive us nuts about this team, this group seems to have a quiet mental toughness that allows them to keep plugging away and not get down throughout the game. They don’t have a singular leader like the ’08 squad, but we love that they seem to have a knack for just hanging in there until they can figure it out. URI, WVU, Towson, and this week were all games where they really struggled for huge early stretches, but ultimately found their stride and acquitted themselves well. Also, what a difference a few hours make: In this case, just sneaking out with a win may vault JMU to the nation’s #1 ranking as all three teams ahead of them lost (all of them at home too) NDSU lost to Indiana St., Montana St. fell to Eastern Washington, and yes, ODU gave up 38 unanswered points in getting whipped by suddenly scary Villanova. All things considered, ranking mean nothing thanks to playoffs, but it would be nice. NDSU could stay #1, or EWU could jump the Dukes after the upset of Montana St., or possibly even unbeaten Lehigh could garner some consideration.
Also nice to see a Wide Blocker, I mean Wide Receiver, finally step up. Arlandis Harvey turned in career-best performance to lead this injury-riddled corps with six catches for 113 yards and a TD.
While JT threw another gag-inducing pick early, he also made some good throws yesterday for huge yardage in addition to his continued strong running game.
The Bad
Can’t remember who I’m stealing this from Twitter yesterday, but Mickey was definitely channeling his inner Andy Reid in terms of clock management at the end of the first half. Somehow he ended up with timeouts in his pocket on the W&M 34 yard line when time expired. Awful.
The Ugly
The remaining schedule. Other than Georgia St. (a well-scheduled Homecoming opponent), the rest of the way is going to be no picnic. Richmond nearly upset New Hampshire on the road while putting up 40 points and certainly won’t be easy next week. Villanova is apparently very much back, the trip to Orono, Maine in November is always brutal, and of course ODU to close. In other words, no matter what the polls say tomorrow, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
A think this review was entirely too nice. To name of few of the many more bads and uglies, the clock management was also on Thorpe. We ran a play with 15 seconds left and his indecisiveness cause the clock to run out, no way Mickey should’ve seen that happening. Thorpe indecisiveness plagued the offense the whole first half and much of the second. While I couldn’t tell for sure whether they were designed runs or not, there were way to many QB draw plays where Thorpe would halfass look to through it, then scamper out a good pocket for a one yard gain. Two fumbles by him(one lost) is also not good. Our ability to run between the tackles is also looking bad. Twice from the one and no touchdown? Not a marker of a championship team. Playcalling was bad as well. Too many screens, outside runs or Thorpe keeper and conservative playcalls on first down. One of the few times Thorpe went deep was on a 3rd and 5, which obviously should’ve been a much safer throw. 5 of 13 on third downs isn’t great either.The run defense also looked suspect for much of the game, but we did get good pressure on their quarterback. On the bright side Starke continues to be a solid kicker only missing a 48 yarder to the side but with plenty of leg. And yes, we did get a win which is always nice.
thank you for not naming Friday night’s game that, indeed, shall not be named.
The clock management was definitely on Mickey– though the late indecisiveness from Thorpe probably hurt us, Mickey not using one his two unused timeouts before the final W&M punt ran about 40 seconds off the clock. Who knows what he could have picked up with the other timeout. The refs dropped the ball too, there should have been one second left at the end of the half.
Run defense was poor because of d-line injuries. You can hop on Madizone and watch the post-game press conference, coach said they’re desperate for interior guys right now. that’s what concerns me the most. theres talking of taking redshirts off guys, it’s getting that bad.
The Bad: I hate to say it, but I fear our potential with Thorpe at QB has a ceiling and it’s not high enough to get us to a national championship. I, for one, am not jumping up and down that he received a 6th year of eligibility for next year. I’d really like to see some new blood get a shot at QB. Yes, we won’t have to try to “keep up” with ODU’s run and shoot offense after this year, but there are plenty of good offenses in the FCS that we will have to contend with if we are to make a serious run at the national championship. JT has more than enough experience that he should not be displaying confusion in the 2 minute drill. We are talking about squeaking out an OT win over a 2 win team. We should be better than that! With all of his experience, we have several years of 5 loss seasons which is not good enough for a team that considers itself in the upper tier of FCS teams.
The Good: I attended this week’s Villanova vs. ODU game. I am happy to report that ‘Nova thrashed ODU by controlling the ball with a strong running QB and thwarted ODU’s offense with a constant pass rush that kept ODU QB Heineike off his game. This may be a good omen for JMU as we can play the same type of game against ODU with Thorpe and Scott running the ball and a strong defense.
Oh, and one more thing….it is sad to see that bird as W&M’s mascot. They got screwed by the NCAA while FSU is still the Seminoles with a chief on a horse throwing flaming spears into the turf.
As bad as this may sound, in all honesty I’m glad JMU didn’t jump to #1. I think they’re over ranked at #2 and I thought they were over ranked at #4 and #5.
I believe that being ranked this high will do more bad than good. It plays games with the team’s head as shown by their extremely slow starts to both the Towson and W&M games.
Who knows, maybe it will get them fired up and make them come out swinging against Richmond. I sure hope so. We can’t afford to start games like we have the past couple of weeks against the remaining schedule.
Number 1-4 get auto home games so that’s the significance of the polls. At this point I am curious how much of the votes going to EW were cast in what I call the “Mickey effect.” Love the guy but many others do not and there are quite a few in the media and coaches polls that feel that way.
Curious how NDSU only dropped to number 4 after losing to an unranked team? Is it respect for the national championship or something else? I’d like to have a crack at them at JMU in December in the freeeeezing cold with a nice little winter chill coming off the lake.
As bad as the offense looked at times on Saturday, they still found a way to win and that is what good teams do. Yeah they got some help from the W&M kicker but zero help from the Refs. What was up with that TD call in OT for W&M —- their WR and Laycock complain so the Refs just change their call come on. There is no replay is regular season I-AA, show some sac and stick with your calls. The defense controlled the QB runs in the second half much better. As JMU did in the second OT, when you get inside the 5 you got to get under center and put a FB in the game for blocking.
I think they come out fired up for Richmond next week.
The real bad….is the AWFUL student support the last 2 games….both of which were close, down to the wire games, and they start leaving en-mass in the 3rd quarter. That is AWFUL support from the students. Everyone complains about having quality athletic teams and when you have one you cannot stay for the whole game in a close game.
I am also not at all thrilled about Thorpe coming back. He has never impressed me (well, ok, the Rhode island game, but really? Rhode Island?)
I’ll def. give him credit- he shows flashes of brilliance (Towson) and he has a winning record, but he just isn’t the kind of player that is going to just take over the game. He is just “ok”.
The last 5 minutes of the first half made me want to tear my eyes out. Did we really run a bubble screen 2 plays in a row? Also- DQS is overrated. Best case scenario- he is a has-been. I haven’t seen anything from him this year. If he’s not healthy, he needs to get out of the way. We have too many good RB’s on the roster.
My #1 complaint is all this cute east/west running we’re doing. It makes me want to vomit.` Maybe we need to put a giant stobe light in the back of the endzone so they know which direction to run. We could paint arrows on the field that point towards the paydirt. Paint the endzone blaze orange so they can see where to go?
@ 2004Duke…I guess that’s what I needed to do with my electric football game!…LOL.
As far as the student support goes, I thought they stuck around much longer than the non-students. We came to our first game since the new stadium opened and were shocked when most of the people in our section (upper section) left while W&M was driving late in the 4th. Its college football, anything can happen and those fans had no faith. We drove 9 hours so we weren’t about to leave early. It was definitely worth the money and drive up. It was our first time sitting in the new part of the stadium and it was a little too calm. I was almost afraid to stand up for fear of the people behind us getting mad. I’m waiting to hear on the radio broadcast this Saturday that JMU has more fans at Richmond than the Spiders do!
Drake, I agree too many leave in general….but my section was pretty good and it looked awful when I looked across to the student section and endzone section (basically empty except for the band).
Go ahead and standup and make some noise it is a football game, if the folks behind you have a problem f’em.
Oh now the endzone people left. I didn’t realize that was all students. I did notice that those fans left. What really got me is that if you sit far enough to the right on the new side, you can’t see the video score board and the small one above the student side doesn’t have the down or distance. Maybe I’m just too lazy to count the yards after each play.
Everyone seems to hate on Thorpe getting a sixth year but the next best option will be a second year player. Is that what we want this year and next? He helped lead us to the playoffs last year and has us at 5-1 and at #2 in the country (thanks in large part to an above average defense). 2004Duke is wrong when he says DQS is overrated. DQS is not a full time RB and should be used more like Villanova used Westbrook and Szczur, returning kicks, catching balls out of the backfield, etc. No more running up the middle out of shotgun on 3rd or 4th and short for him. Give that ball to Anderson