My reaction to New Hampshire

What the … Did we really watch that happen? It’s taken a while for that performance to sink in. The morning after, reading all the perspectives as folks are taking shots and blaming everything imaginable.
There’s not a huge difference between the top tiers of the “Conference Formerly Know As I-AA” and major college division teams who are not nationally ranked. But I had hoped for the kind of defense that played the #3 team in the nation to show up.

So what do we do now?
Well, to start with I’m not going to use this ruff for anything other than a reminder. Our focus this week is on the Bearcats of Cincinnati. For those of you unfamiliar, Marshall dropped the Bearcats in the 2000 Motor City Bowl. Four years later, Cincy returned the favor and ground out a decisive 32-14 win in the Fort Worth Bowl. Since then Marshall has had significant growing pains since joining CUSA although with their level of youth and talent, have a potentially bright future. Cincinnati is expected to finish 5th in the Big East Conference.

Whoop-de-do? Well, considering the four teams ahead of Cincy are #5 WVU, #11 Rutgers, #18 Louisville and #23 South Florida.

Still Whoop-De-Do? OK consider this. In its three games, the Bearcats have scored an average of 46.7 points and given up a TOTAL of 16 points (yeah, that’s total — not average.) They have collected 53 Top 25 votes for themselves as well.

Marshall, although it woke up offensively to put up 35 points in what could be conceivably called ‘garbage time,’ the defense has given up and average of 42.3 points per game.

The drawing this week isn’t going to be spilling over with a confident Marco this week. Not until this team can put together a complete game on both sides of the ball.

Stay tuned.