Western @ Youngstown State - 10/11/14

BobLovely · Mon Oct 13, 2014 7:37 am

Outstanding win by the Leathernecks! This is just the type of victory that builds confidence and inspires the belief that the team can win when the game is on the line.

Hopefully, this victory will put "butts in the seats" at Hanson Field for the next two home games...

Bob

WIU0812 · Mon Oct 13, 2014 9:16 am

I guess Norvell reads the forum as I said he had to have 300 yards passing in order to win and he was just shy of that mark and proved to have what I would call his best game yet at WIU. Here is to him maturing and hopefully throwing more great passes like he did last weekend! If he continues on that string we will have shot at every remaining game. I strongly believe that the offense leans on him the most and we will need to see similar performances in order to pull off more wins like that one. We can not be running for 150 and passing for 100 it just does not work in this days college football. In our league we need around 300 to 400 yards of offense every game to be competitive. Those doubting Norvell lets remember that he is already in the top 10 QB's for passing touchdowns half way through his sophomore season.

sealhall74 · Mon Oct 13, 2014 9:31 am

WIU0812 wrote:I guess Norvell reads the forum as I said he had to have 300 yards passing in order to win and he was just shy of that mark and proved to have what I would call his best game yet at WIU. Here is to him maturing and hopefully throwing more great passes like he did last weekend! If he continues on that string we will have shot at every remaining game. I strongly believe that the offense leans on him the most and we will need to see similar performances in order to pull off more wins like that one. We can not be running for 150 and passing for 100 it just does not work in this days college football. In our league we need around 300 to 400 yards of offense every game to be competitive. Those doubting Norvell lets remember that he is already in the top 10 QB's for passing touchdowns half way through his sophomore season.

I think if you are relying on single back sets most of the time as we do, the QB must be able to do something with his feet every now and then to take some heat off the RB. The last couple of games, Norvell has shown the ability pick up a few yards the hard way, gaining 42 against the Bison and 32 against the Penguins, just enough to keep the defense honest. Hopefully more of that to come down the road.

WIU0812 · Mon Oct 13, 2014 1:53 pm

So we almost beat the #1 team in the nation and then beat a high ranked Youngstown State and we only get 13 votes in the FCS top 25 pole not even enough to get us close to making it in. With gains like that we would definitely need the next two wins just to think about entering the top 25....

http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/football/f ... ts-network

Mon Oct 13, 2014 2:39 pm

WIU0812 wrote:So we almost beat the #1 team in the nation and then beat a high ranked Youngstown State and we only get 13 votes in the FCS top 25 pole not even enough to get us close to making it in. With gains like that we would definitely need the next two wins just to think about entering the top 25....

http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/football/f ... ts-network

I've always gotten the impression that the Sports Network poll is usually biased towards the east coast teams. Personally, I like the AnyGivenSaturday Poll (http://www.anygivensaturday.com/showthr ... Week7-2014) which has us at #31 currently and the Massey Composite Rankings (http://www.masseyratings.com/cf/compare1aa.htm) where we're ranked #27. Massey takes a bunch of different raking systems and combines them, although he also does his own ranking (which is part of the composite rankings, but is only a small part of it). The Massey Ratings have often been friendly to the Missouri Valley though. Here's where the MVFC teams stand in that system:
#1 NDSU
#2 ISUr
#4 SIU
#6 SDSU
#7 UNI
#10 ISUb
#12 MSU
#13 YSU
#14 WIU
#32 USD

So, he's got 6 members of the conference in his top 10, and all but 1 in his top 15.

For comparison, based on number of votes, Sports Network has us at #43.

I think though, when we beat Illinois State on Saturday, that should break us into the top 25 pretty solidly. Just about every ranking system has Illinois State in their top 10.

WIU0812 · Mon Oct 13, 2014 3:23 pm

Well at least that is a little more of a positive look at things. The scary thing is to make playoffs you basically will have to be in the top 4 of the MVFC which is a tough task at hand. We would need to basically win out and most likely hope that INSU, UNI, YSU and SIU all lose at least one more game.

Mon Oct 13, 2014 4:05 pm

WIU0812 wrote:Well at least that is a little more of a positive look at things. The scary thing is to make playoffs you basically will have to be in the top 4 of the MVFC which is a tough task at hand. We would need to basically win out and most likely hope that INSU, UNI, YSU and SIU all lose at least one more game.

With as tough as the conference is this year, I'm not really holding out hope that we'll make the playoffs (it'd be awesome if we did, but it'd take some amazing play by our team as well as a bit of luck). I could see us winning 3-4 more games, but I don't think we'll end up winning out. I think the game at SDSU is probably going to be the toughest from here on out on the schedule, although we've shown we can stop some of the best RBs in all of college football and it's been shown that if you can stop Zenner, you have a good chance at beating the Jackrabbits. Still, if we can win 3 of the final 5 games, finish 6-6 overall and 4-4 in the conference, I'd find that....acceptable...considering where I think we are in our rebuilding process.

rocki · Mon Oct 13, 2014 4:25 pm

I haven't gotten past the good feeling of finally putting 4 quarters together and coming out ahead.

IF we were able to win out and go to playoffs, that would be nice, but I would be happy with seeing the team gel more and more and proving that the YSU game was not a fluke.

Onward and upward!