I've had a chance to see both Alcorn and Alabama State and I think the "experts" were mistaken in picking the Braves ahead of the Hornets. The Hornets have a more complete team, definitely a better running game, a stronger defense (especially vs the run) and, believe it or not, I think their QB is better than Carrie. Alcorn has an advantage in the defensive secondary. Both teams look like they play good special teams to me although Alcorn's punter was kinda weak.
Don't be fooled by the lack of passing this week from the Bison. True, its not our stong suit but honestly, its not as weak as it looked today. The coaches made an obvious decision to grind it out on these guys to eliminate the TOs that have been killing us and it worked. We allowed the Braves to make all the mistakes and took advantage of them. That's exactly what the Hornets did to us. Still we rushed for 190 yards even with them stacking things up in the box and Moreno had a few good passes dropped on him, one caused a tip that led to his second INT. You can't blame a QB for that. Our recievers had been playing well until today. This was their first bad game. We have just enough passing game to get by and with two home games against Savannah St and Charleston Southern coming up we'll get a chance to work that out too.
And get off that "refs cheated for Howard" stuff. That's crazy. They called our corner for two of the most bogus pass interferance penalties I've seen in ages. On top of that they took a clear safety away from us just before that. They practically handed ASU their first scoring drive on a platter.
And please, don't ask what's wrong with Alcorn. They're fine. They just ran into a defense that's actually been playing well all season (check the stats; the early season scores we gave up were not their fault). Our O and special just teams just put them in horrible positions in the first two weeks. We just got our best DE back too. You might recognize him. He was stomping in your end zone and he absolutely CRUSHED your QB on an outside rush. ASU was trying to play to the biggest strength of our team, the defensive secondary. We played to their weakness, the run defense. Matchups, matchups, matchups. When there's defense there's hope. And this isn't just bandwangon talk. I called this before the game even started...
http://www.meacfans.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/43/t/002560/p/1.html
Our kicker is the MVP!
Alabama State for SWAC Champs.
-ep
