FalconBlog--Triumphs and Trials in the BGSU Falcon Nation

CBSSports.com Blog Poll Revised

2009-12-09T10:34:00.001-05:00

Rank	Team	Delta

1	Alabama
2	Texas	1
3	Cincinnati	2
4	Florida	2
5	TCU	1
6	Boise State
7	Oregon
8	Ohio State
9	Georgia Tech	1
10	Iowa	1
11	Penn State
12	Virginia Tech	3
13	Brigham Young	1
14	West Virginia	5
15	LSU	6
16	Miami (Florida)	4
17	Pittsburgh	5
18	Arizona	5
19	Oregon State	6
20	Stanford	4
21	Wisconsin	4
22	Nebraska
23	Southern Cal	6
24	Utah
25	Oklahoma State	3
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: California (#16), Houston (#18).

I made a couple changes. I decided I had Miami too high and Oregon State too low.....now we take a blogpoll break until the bowls are over.

Clawson Presser--Idaho Memories

2009-12-09T08:15:00.001-05:00

So, Coach Clawson had a weekly presser, and there was not much new information provided. Still interesting if you want to hope over to bgsufalcons.com and take a listen. Kind of unreasonable to think that there would be much new to say, because there hasn't been too much going on.

The most interesting thing he said had to do with coaching transitions. When the whole world was predicting the BG would have a bad season because of Coach Clawson's trouble in the first year, one of the things I suggested was that he might actually have learned something during those struggles. Which, he said yesterday he probably had.

First, he's really excited to to be in the Humanitarian Bowl. Let there be no doubt.
It helps that our guys have played on the turf (or most of them) plus we will get to practice on it more than you would just heading out for a game.
Coach has been to Idaho once. He was the RB coach for Lehigh, and they got stuck playing out there. John L. Smith (smack!) was the coach, and they had a good QB. The Lehigh bus got caught in the snow going up a hill for two hours and that was the good part of the trip. Idaho killed them.
He noted that the MAC had a poor bowl performance last year (my note: last two years, but who is counting?).
He said that Idaho has a good coach from the PAC-10, which I assume is true. He also continues to say we have not played a WAC team, which Boise is.
He said he asked players about what went wrong in the Mobile Debacle a couple of years ago. He didn't say what they told him, but he said that the team was trying to strike a balance--not hold double practices and make the bowl game a punishment, but also working hard enough to try and compete for the win. Some practices will be inside, some outside.
We will work right through Christmas. Coach says with the game that close, he wouldn't enjoy it anyway.

Finally, he is flying to Florida Wednesday with Freddie Barnes for the award ceremony for the Biletnikoff Award as part of the larger college award ceremony. As he noted, only one MAC player will be there that night, and his name is Freddie Barnes. A great moment for Freddie, his Mom, and our program. We'll be watching, and we are incredibly proud of Freddie's season.

Of course, we will all be watching

Blog Heisman

2009-12-09T07:15:00.001-05:00

Hey kids, there is a blog Heisman, which I am voting in for the first time over at Blue Workhorse. Here is the ballot I just submitted.

1. Gerhart

He just had an eye-popping season. More yards than Ingram and 26 TDs....are you kidding me? Ingram only had 18. Gerhart is clearly the highest performing player this season.

2. Ingram
3. Tebow

We'll check in Thursday and see who wins.

#1 in my Heart

2009-12-08T19:26:00.000-05:00

ESPN ranks the Humanitarian Bowl #31 out of 34. Meh.

Freddie Barnes, non-AQ All-American

2009-12-08T16:12:00.001-05:00

Well, you can take this for what it is worth....Graham Watson blogs on ESPN covering the "other" conferences, which basically means non-BCS (or in ESPN parlance, non-AQ for non-Automatic Qualifier, and they are talking about automatically qualifying for the BCS, so it essentially means the same thing but somehow sounds less exclusionary, I guess).

Graham put together her non-AQ All-American team, and Freddie Barnes is on the team at WR, which is an honor he certainly deserves. In fact, she says he was a "no-brainer."

He is the only MAC player on offense. Adrian Robinson, Nick Bellore and Brian Lainhart are all MAC players on the defensive side of the "ball," which technically does not exist, as the whole thing is imaginary.

LaVon Brazill made it as a kick returner.

MAC Predictions Reviewed, with an appropriate level of satisfaction

2009-12-07T14:45:00.001-05:00

OK, so with the regular season now concluded, it is time to look back and see how my predictions fared. My predictions are below, with actual finishes listed in parantheses to the right.

This is actually pretty good. Last year, if you totaled up the distance from what I had to what actually happened, there was a gap of 26 points. This year, it was 12. A few notes:

The media had 18. So there.
In the East, I didn't miss anyone by more than one.
Saw the Buffalo thing coming.
Didn't overrate Akron.
Biggest mistake was faith in Ball State and lack of faith in NIU.

So, you know, for wild-ass, uniformed, unpaid and generally insipid predictions....not too bad.

East Predictions

Temple (2nd)
Ohio (1st)
Kent (4th)
Bowling Green (3rd)
Akron (6th)
Buffalo (5th)
Miami (7th)

West Predictions

1. CMU (1st)
2. WMU (3rd)
3. Ball State (5th)
4. Toledo (4th)
5. NIU (2nd)
6. EMU (6th)

CBSSports.com Blog Poll Draft

2009-12-07T11:24:00.002-05:00

Rank	Team	Delta

1	Alabama
2	Texas	1
3	Cincinnati	2
4	Florida	2
5	TCU	1
6	Boise State
7	Oregon
8	Ohio State
9	Georgia Tech	1
10	Iowa	1
11	Penn State
12	Virginia Tech	3
13	Miami (Florida)	7
14	Brigham Young
15	West Virginia	4
16	LSU	5
17	Pittsburgh	5
18	Arizona	5
19	Stanford	5
20	Wisconsin	5
21	Nebraska
22	Southern Cal	5
23	Oregon State	10
24	Utah
25	Oklahoma State	3
Last week's ballot

Dropped Out: California (#16), Houston (#18).

Falcons Appear Headed to Boise

2009-12-06T19:43:00.001-05:00

Well, it ended up like it was expected to be, which means that BG and Idaho will play in the Humanitarian Bowl. When you are used to being "consummated" as we are in the MAC, there were some sweat-inducing moments over the past few hours, however.

The MAC announcements were coming out later than everyone else, and that had some rumors going that while the bowls were required to take BG, they were not required to provide them a non-MAC matchup, and you started to think that some genius somewhere was saying "you know, BG and Temple didn't play," and I had kind of a sick feeling. And, the Humanitarian Bowl was starting to flirt with UCLA, and that smelled like a classic screw job.

I have a hunch that the delays in the MAC was the league office working the phones on this because playing a team from your conference in a bowl game would totally suck. But, it appears that ignominious fate has been dodged.

No Boise is not the most glamorous destination and it isn't warm. And, it will amount to a road game with Idaho being much closer. Having said that, it is a decent matchup and very much a winnable game and it beats playing Temple, with no disrespect intended to them at all.

OU is playing Marshall in the Pizza Bowl.
CMU is playing Troy at GMAC.
Temple is playing UCLA or Army at Eagle Bank
NIU is playing South Florida in Toronto

So, one or two matchups with BCS conferences. All winnable games, but two are very winnable.

And, the January bowl game in Toronto will mark the first time in history people are traveling FROM Florida TO Ontario in January. There may not even be flights.

Update: This is all confirmed now. Book your flights. Bring skis.

International Centre for Special Teams Research

2009-12-06T13:48:00.001-05:00

Well, the final regular season meeting of the ICSTR has been held, and judgment rendered on special team play in the UT game, which was, uh, 8 days ago. Anyway, it was, by far, BG's most productive special teams game of the season, and really the first game where special teams play clearly put the opposition in a position where it was very difficult for them to win.

Of course, BG had three huge plays--2 blocked punts and one fumble recovery, and that combined with some good field position off kickoff returns gave BG 13 positive points. Even cooler, there were only 2 negative points, which was far and away the best performance of the season. We'll look at the year, in a second, but just to say that BG's special teams play had a clear role in the victory over the Rockets.

Bowling Green Positive (+13)

BG blocks punt (+3)
BG blocks punt (+3)
BG recovers fumble (+3)
UT kickoff returned to BG48 before penalty (+1)
UT kickoff returned to BG 40 (+1)
UT Kickoff returned to BG 45 (+1)
UT Kickoff returned to BG 40 (+1)

Bowling Green Negative (-2)

BG punt 28 yard net (-1)
BG kickoff return to UT 38 (-1)

Bowling Green Neutral

BG Kickoff returned to UT 32
BG xp
BG Kickoff returned to UT 33
BG Xp
BG kickoff returned to UT 20
UT punt 34 yard net
BG xp
BG kickoff returned to UT 27
BG 22 yard FG
BG Punt 37 yard net
BG xp
BG Punt 38 yard net
BG xp
BG kickoff returned to UT 33

The UT story is pretty much just a flipside. Tough to win when your special teams don't do any better than this.

UT Positive (+2)

UT kickoff touchback (+1)
BG kickoff return to UT 38 (+1)

UT Negative (-14)

BG blocks punt (-3)
BG blocks punt (-3)
BG recovers fumble (-3)
UT kickoff returned to UT 37 with penalty (-2)
UT kickoff returned to BG 40 (-1)
UT Kickoff returned to BG 45 (-1)
UT Kickoff returned to BG 40 (-1)

UT Neutral

BG Kickoff returned to UT 32
BG Kickoff returned to UT 33
BG kickoff returned to UT 20
UT punt 34 yard net
BG kickoff returned to UT 27
BG kickoff returned to UT 33
UT xp
UT xp
UT 26 yd FG

Now, let's look at the season as a whole. Below are BG's scores. The headline is that with the gaudy numbers against UT, BG reached neutral on the season as a whole. The special teams did improve, finishing in positive territory for each of the last four games. The really poor special teams games (OU and Kent) in the past, BG played better if not great on the way home.

Now, below are the rankings for the opponents, who finished the year +6 and therefore 1/2 a point better than BG per game. The UT game the highest number of negative plays made by any BG opponent this year.

Triumph in the Bronx

2009-12-06T00:34:00.000-05:00

The Falcon's men's basketball team rolled easily over Fordham Saturday night in the Bronx, with a 67-46 victory over a team in the midst of a huge amount of turmoil. Their interim coach was playing without his leading scorer on a team that had trouble shooting the ball in the first place, and the Falcons took full advantage, holding the Rams to 23.8% shooting from the field for the game. I haven't seen anything on it, but I suspect it has been a long time since a team shot that poorly against us.

Even beyond that, it could have been a lot worse. BG had a season-high 19 turnovers, and that could have been even bigger. Still, this is a team that has had some close games, and a road blow out is always a welcome thing. BG shot 51% which is also unusual.

Another interesting thing on our team is that we are not really going to the 3 much, as seem to be really pushing the ball inside. In fact, BG only tried 8 threes.

NCAA Basketball Stats

As you can see here, the game was close for a while, but BG locked down Fordham in the last 5 minutes of the first half and blew the game wide open.

NCAA Basketball Stats

Dee Brown had another nice game, with 14 points and 7 boards. Otis had 9 and 11 (although there were 6 turnovers), and Scott Thomas hit double figures with 10. Danny McElroy also had 8 points in one of his better games, and Marschall had 8 too.

With their third straight win, BG now pops over .500 and now has a 4-3 record. There's a break coming now for finals, and then the Falcons Magical December Mystery will head back to New York state.

More on Fordham

2009-12-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

The rather tumultuous situation at Fordham is being watched carefully by this excellent blog from over there. The interim coach is trying to get Fontan back into the fold.

Fordham Preview

2009-12-05T09:17:00.001-05:00

The Falcons are in New York as I write this, preparing to head over to the Bronx to take on the Fordham Rams. They arrive at an interesting time. Just this week, Fordham axed their coach, Dereck Whittenburg, and appointed one of his assistants as an interim head coach.

It is really rare to make a change like that in the season, and it is even rarer to make it this early. Which is not to say that the program isn't struggling. They were 3-27 last year and 1-4 last year, the last loss being a shellacking at the hand of Manhattan (a intra-borough beat down).

Beyond that, there are reports that the team's leading scorer, Jio Fontan, has left the program. He is still listed on the roster as of Friday night.

So, into this troubled gym come the Falcons on the first game of their five game road trip. The Falcons beat Fordham last year at AA in a game that was probably tighter than it needed to be. In fact, Fordham had a lead at the half.

Freshman Chris Gaston looks like a really good player, scoring 15 and grabbing 11 boards, and you don't have any bad D1 players average double doubles.

They are a very poor shooting team, 36% for the season, which is among the five worst percentages in college basketball. If BG can play some good defense, you'd expect to hold them even below that, and it becomes hard to imagine you could lose a game with that number.

Chips Champs...

2009-12-05T00:17:00.000-05:00

The Chips won a closer than expected game today to claim the MAC Championship. Congrats to them, they are clearly the best team in the conference. 3 championships in 4 years is a pretty good accomplishment.

Clawson Presser, Not all Boring Edition

2009-12-04T11:07:00.000-05:00

Coach Clawson had his presser to end the regular season yesterday, and I encourage any Falcon fan to hop over and listen to the whole thing. Very compelling stuff, and considerably more open now that the season has ended.

First, he dealt with the Kevin Alvarado situation, and gave what appeared to be a pretty transparent description of what had happened.

The gist of it is this:

Kevin has presented no discipline problems--not even 30 seconds late for a meeting.
Kevin disclosed the incident to Coach himself.
Initially, it was not believed the police were going to be involved, and the situation was being addressed internally at the university and within the football program.
Once charges were brought, the scope of the issue changed and Kevin was suspended from competition, pending the outcome of the case.

He was asked directly why Alvarado played two games after the assault, and Clawson said that was appropriate with an issue that appeared would not involve the court or the police.

As I noted in my first post on this, let's not make any assumptions until the issue is resolved.

In the meantime, Coach made it clear that the conduct of players is extremely important to the program, and that it will not be tolerated or accepted. Young men will, however, continue to make mistakes.

He got a fairly pointed question concerning the fact that Coach Brandon was fired in part for discipline issues within the program, and he was brought in to fix that, and what did he think about the Alvarado situation from that perspective.

I thought he was a little defensive here. He said that as a coach you deal with stuff like that everyday and it is never where you want it to be, which is not defensive by its words--more by the tone he used.

On other stuff, he said he was excited with the end of the season, winning 6 out of the last 7 games, and beating Toledo. He noted that there were a number of games where BG was tied or losing in the fourth quarter and ended up winning (the most marked change from last year's team), and that he was very pleased with the way the first season ended.

His consistent them has been that even when the team was 1-4, they still practiced like they were a good team and kept working hard, and that was eventually what brought them out of it. He especially noted that the OU game was a very tough loss, because of the dropped TD pass and the team being close when it ended. (He also noted that if BG delivers on that game, we're probably playing in Detroit tonight.)

Anyway, he said that the biggest part of the season's success was that the seniors bought into the change and that was how the team exceeded expectations. The players didn't fight his changes or try to keep things they way they used to be.

He said the seniors motivated the team before the UT game by saying that if they won, they could stay a team for another month, and if they lost, it was all over. That's pretty good stuff, in my opinion.

For the first time in public he talked about how thin this year's team is--and to some extent will be. When you consider redshirts, injuries, etc, he said we were often down to 45-50 scholarship players who were available to play, which is a pretty low number and less even than an NFL team dresses for a game. Starters had to play a lot of snaps, including special teams.

Just an aside: if Brandon had been down to 45 scholarship players, he would have been whining about it all year.

He talked about how the Freddie Barnes season evolved. He said that in spring practice, Barnes emerged as the top WR. Then, a rash of injuries hit the remaining WRs, and that necessitated getting the ball to Barnes on a priority basis. If our WRs were healthy, he probably would have had somewhere in the 80 catch range.

He noted disappointment that BG was 6-2 in MAC play and only had four guys honored on the All-MAC team. He noted that Sheehan deserved second team (which I covered earlier, it is a complete joke that Hiller was ahead of Sheehan and utterly indefensible). In particular, he thought Jarrett Sanderson deserved to be honored.

Coach was asked if he felt that with all the first year starters on defense, it took a while for them to gel during the season. He was pretty candid about citing the true difference as the defense with Mahone and without him. We only lost one game where Mahone played this year and he made a huge difference to the defense.

Someone said they had been contacted to buy ads for the Humanitarian Bowl, but Clawson said there has not been any decision made on that. He said that it will either be Boise, DC, or Toronto. (Note: I think everyone is expecting Boise). He doesn't care who we play.

Finally, a cautionary note to the Falcon Nation. The next two classes are considered pretty thin talent wise. A lot of players who were recruited in those classes are no longer with the program. While I have confidence in this coaching staff, it is quite possible that a couple of challenging years lie ahead for the program. If we win next year, we will probably be exceeding expectations even more than this season. (We'll look later at this, but even though most of our defense was playing for the first time, we were a very senior-dominated defense again this season).

Coach said that you have to recruit the right guys for our program...guys who want to be here and are committed to graduating from this university. Obviously, our program had a couple years when we didn't do a very good job of that, and the price will be paid. It wasn't all bad--remember that the prior regime recruited Freddie Barnes, Tyler Sheehan and Jarett Sanderson. But, we won't have optimal numbers.

Anyway, there will be a lot more opportunities to rehash the season in the coming weeks and months, once it is ACTUALLY OVER, which it, thankfully, is not.

MAC Blog Roundtable is on the air....

2009-12-04T09:46:00.000-05:00

This is our final issue for the regular season, and I just want to compliment my fellow MAC bloggers. It was an excellent time this year, and I thought we had a lot of insightful and interesting conversations. Hopefully, it added value to our readers as well.

BG to Face Interim Coach Saturday

2009-12-04T08:11:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Fordham announced that it has fired Head Basketball Coach Dereck Whittenburg. Assistant Julian Grasso will serve as interim coach.

A mid-season firing is very rare in college basketball, and especially one this early in the season. On the other hand, Fordham is 1-4 this year and was 3-25 last year, one of the worst teams in D1 hoops.

This should add an interesting counterpoint to the game on Saturday.

Whittenburg, of course, was on that NC State team that shocked Phi Slamma Jamma and had Jim Valvano running around the floor like a crazy man.

Falcons Avenge Savannah State Debacle, win at AA

2009-12-03T23:42:00.001-05:00

I'll have more later, but BG avenged their heartbreaking loss in Savannah last year with a 59-51 victory at Anderson Arena.

In the post-game presser, Coach Orr called it a "step in the right direction" and I suppose it was. He said that because with just under 4:00 left, the Tigers were up by 1 point. From that point in, BG outscored them 11-2...."closing the game out" as Coach said.

The key basket came with with 2:29 left. Tracy Rankins, the leading SSUM scorer had been unconscious from behind the arc for most of the game (single handedly keeping the Tigers in the game), and he lined up to shoot with his team down one. Scott Thomas blocked the shot, a huge defensive play, and then on the other end, in the half court offense, things just didn't seem to be happening, and Joe Jakubowski created something off the dribble, sweeping down the left side of the key and getting the ball onto the glass and in the hoop.

That's a pretty nice swing right there. Then, BG got a stop on a missed 3, and came down the floor. We fed Otis on the inside, he drew coverage and kicked it to Jakubowski who nailed a 3. From there BG was in pretty good shape.

Otis had 3 assists and no turnovers. Yep.

Defensively, BG held SSUM to 51 points, which is below their season average. We played zone the whole way, I believe, and sometimes it seemed like we had some real success with it, and sometimes the Tigers were finding pretty good shots. We seem willing to allow the penetration pass to the elbow, because whoever shoots is going to have to get around or over Otis.

The stops coming home were key, and in addition to the block, Scott Thomas had a key steal as well.

As you can see here, it was a close and pretty tense game the whole way.

NCAA Basketball Stats

BG attempted only 7 3s in the whole game, which is pretty rare, even for our team. Conversely, Savannah was 5-7 from beyond the arc in the first half and 2-12 in the second half.

Offensively, BG only turned the ball over 11 times, and had clearly prepared themselves to handle the press and it generally wasn't an issue. The team is still struggling for a lack of perimeter shooting, and some of our shooters are slumping, but as long as they keep shooting (and they are), it will come around.

NCAA Basketball Stats

That's going to help a lot. Coach keeps saying we are a work in progress, and that's certainly true. The offense just struggles to get good shots for long periods of time, and then when we do get the ball inside, we have a hard time converting the short shots. Our starting bigs were 6-18 from the field, for example. The free throw shooting continues to be sub par (55% tonight). The team clearly has some areas of improvement.

They now go on a run of 5 straight road games, which is a great opportunity for us to both grow as a team and get ready for conference play. It will be a grind, though, no question about it.

All-MAC teams announced--Sheehan Robbed, Ignorance Reigns

2009-12-03T09:44:00.000-05:00

The All-MAC teams were announced yesterday, and the Falcons fared pretty well, although I have one pretty major quibble with what was decided.

To no one's surprise, LeFevour won the Leadership Award (MVP) as well as offensive player of the year, both well deserved awards. I wondered if they wouldn't split the two of them (one for LeFevour and one for Barnes), but even in my orangest heart I can't quibble with these choices.

Beyond that, four Falcons were honored.

Freddie did make first team All-MAC, which he deserved.
Jimmy Sheidler, second team at TE, which surprised me, though I don't know why. He's a good player.
Shane Steffy on the third team line, also well deserved.

Now, there's one more. Tyler Sheehan was third-team All-MAC....behind Tim Hiller of WMU.

And that, my friends, is total and complete BS...unencumbered by the thought process.

Let's look at some facts.

Yards/game: Sheehan 1st in MAC, Hiller 2nd
Completion %: Sheehan 64%, Hiller 60%
TD Passes: Sheehan 23, Hiller 23
Interceptions: Sheehan 6, Hiller 12
Passing Efficiency: Sheehan 134, Hiller 122 (Hiller is (9TH in the MAC)
Yards per attempt: Sheehan 6.9, Hiller 6.4
Yards per completion: Sheehan 10.8, Hiller10.5
Leadership: Sheehan's team bowl-bound, Hiller's team tanked on high expectations

These numbers tell the story.

Sheehan leads Hiller on every measure except one, and that one is a tie. There is only one reason for Hiller to be ranked ahead of Sheehan, and that's because whatever numb-nuts vote on this award decided before the season that Hiller was the better QB and didn't both to check and see who had the better season, because it isn't even close.

The choice of Hiller as second team ALL-MAC is completely wrong and just ridiculous. Tyler Sheehan was the second best QB in the MAC this year....there can be no doubt about it, and a voter with even a passing amount of thought would have seen it that way.

I know these awards don't mean anything. But, it just seems to me that the voters--out of respect for the game--would show a little more respect for the players who are working to earn these honors.

2009 MAC Specialty Award Winners

Vern Smith Leadership Award Winner: Dan LeFevour, Central Michigan

Coach of the Year: Al Golden, Temple

Offensive Player of the Year: Dan LeFevour, Central Michigan

Defensive Player of the Year: Adrian Robinson, Temple

Special Teams Player of the Year: Antonio Brown, Central Michigan

Freshman of the Year: Bernard Pierce, Temple

All-MAC First Team Offense

Position - Name - School

Quarterback - Dan LeFevour, Central Michigan #^~

Center - Eddie Adamski, Northern Illinois %

Offensive Lineman - Allen Ollenburger, Central Michigan

Offensive Lineman - Jason Onyebuagu, Northern Illinois %

Offensive Lineman - Darius Morris, Temple

Offensive Lineman - Colin Madison, Temple

Tight End - Jesse Rack, Buffalo

Wide Receiver - Freddie Barnes, Bowling Green

Wide Receiver - Antonio Brown, Central Michigan @

Wide Receiver - Naaman Roosevelt, Buffalo @&

Wide Receiver - Stephen Williams, Toledo #!

Running Back - Bernard Pierce, Temple

Running Back - Chad Spann, Northern Illinois

Placekicker - Matt Weller, Ohio

All-MAC First Team Defense

Position - Name - School

Outside Linebacker - Lee Renfro, Ohio

Outside Linebacker - Elijah Joseph, Temple

Inside Linebacker - Nick Bellore, Central Michigan @

Inside Linebacker - Cobrani Mixon, Kent State

Down Lineman - Andre Neblett, Temple #!

Down Lineman - Adrian Robinson, Temple

Down Lineman - Muhammad Wilkerson, Temple

Down Lineman - Frank Zombo, Central Michigan @

Defensive Back - Barry Church, Toledo @^~

Defensive Back - Davonte Shannon, Buffalo @^

Defensive Back - Jaiquawn Jarrett, Temple

Defensive Back - Brian Lainhart, Kent State #

Punter - Matt Rinehart, Kent State

All-MAC First Team Specialists

Position - Name - School

Kickoff Return Specialist - Chris Garrett, Ohio

Punt Return Specialist - Antonio Brown, Central Michigan @^

All-MAC Second Team Offense

Position - Name - School

Quarterback - Tim Hiller, Western Michigan %

Center - Colin Miller, Central Michigan

Offensive Lineman - Peter Bittner, Buffalo

Offensive Lineman - Brandon Brooks, Miami

Offensive Lineman - Anthony Parker, Western Michigan

Offensive Lineman - Devin Tyler, Temple

Tight End - Jimmy Scheidler, Bowling Green

Wide Receiver - Eric Page, Toledo

Wide Receiver - Bryan Anderson, Central Michigan @!~

Wide Receiver - Taylor Price, Ohio

Wide Receiver - LaVon Brazill, Ohio

Running Back - Brandon West, Western Michigan %!

Running Back - MiQuale Lewis, Ball State @

Placekicker - Mike Salerno, Northern Illinois #

All-MAC Second Team Defense

Position - Name - School

Outside Linebacker - Austin Pritchard, Western Michigan @

Outside Linebacker - Robert Eddins, Ball State

Inside Linebacker - Brian Wagner, Akron

Inside Linebacker - Noah Keller, Ohio #

Down Lineman - Brandon Crawford, Ball State #&

Down Lineman - Jake Coffman, Northern Illinois

Down Lineman - Monte Simmons, Kent State

Down Lineman - Brandon Bice, Northern Illinois

Defensive Back - Mike Newton, Buffalo #

Defensive Back - Thad Turner, Ohio

Defensive Back - Josh Gordy, Central Michigan

Defensive Back - Miguel Graham, Akron

Punter - Zach Johnson, Eastern Michigan

All-MAC Second Team Specialists

Position - Name - School

Kickoff Return Specialist - James Nixon, Temple

Punt Return Specialist - LaVon Brazill, Ohio

All-MAC Third Team Offense

Position - Name - School

Quarterback - Tyler Sheehan, Bowling Green

Center - John Palumbo, Temple

Offensive Lineman - Joe Flading, Ohio

Offensive Lineman - Shane Steffy, Bowling Green

Offensive Lineman - Chris Rodgers, Ohio

Offensive Lineman - Corey Woods, Akron

Tight End - Steve Maneri, Temple

Wide Receiver - Robert Arnheim, Western Michigan

Wide Receiver - Juan Nunez, Western Michigan %

Wide Receiver - Armand Robinson, Miami

Wide Receiver - Brett Hamlin, Buffalo

Running Back - DaJuane Collins, Toledo %

Running Back - Me'co Brown, Northern Illinois

Placekicker - Alex Steigerwald, Toledo

All-MAC Third Team Defense

Position - Name - School

Outside Linebacker - Andre Hatchett, Eastern Michigan

Outside Linebacker - Amara Kamara, Temple

Inside Linebacker - Alex Joseph, Temple

Inside Linebacker - Archie Donald, Toledo

Down Lineman - Almondo Sewell, Akron %!

Down Lineman - Ernie Hodge, Ohio

Down Lineman - Larry Knight, Central Michigan

Down Lineman - Sean Murnane, Central Michigan %

Defensive Back - Gerald Moore, Ohio

Defensive Back - Dominique Harris, Temple

Defensive Back - Anthony Kokal, Miami

Defensive Back - Jalil Carter, Akron

Punter - Ben Armer, Western Michigan

All-MAC Third Team Specialists

Position - Name - School

Kickoff Return Specialist - Dashan Miller, Akron

Punt Return Specialist - Tommy Davis, Northern Illinois

@ 2008 First team All-MAC

# 2008 Second team All-MAC

% 2008 Third team All-MAC

^ 2007 First team All-MAC

! 2007 Second team All-MAC

& 2007 Third team All-MAC

~ 2006 First team All-MAC

MAC Blogger Roundtable....

2009-12-02T14:11:00.000-05:00

The MAC Blogger roundtable is back this week, as Fire Up Chips took a break from his preparations for the MAC Championship Game to throw some suggestions into the cage.

I. As a Patriots fan since the mid 90's I have learned that once you start winning, everybody hates you. So go ahead and vent. Give me the top 3 things that bothers you about CMU. Something they did to your team, the headlines, or the Dan LeFevour love. If you don't feel comfortable with that, than summarize what the Dan LeFevour era at CMU has meant to the MAC Conference.

I actually don't hate CMU at all. Or at least I didn't until I found out you root for the Patriots. Now, everything is different.

OK, not really.

My lone scarring vision of a Chippewa is the sight of a very fat punter waddling down the Doyt Perry Field grass in 1994, ripping my heart from my chest with every step. I respect the CMU program, especially because they have been able to sustain their momentum through a coaching change, which has caused, uh, problems in the MAC.

Oh, and I thought the billboard outside Comerica Park was a joke. Think, actually.

II. Akron just gave J.D Brookhart his marching orders. Do you think this move is justified, or would you agree with me that winning in the MAC is all about luck and timing...getting that one elite QB the BCS overlooks and riding that Pony as long as you can.

This is a really good question. I talk about this with people all the time. Sustaining your success in the MAC appears to be something no one can do, which is why it is smart for coaches to get up and go when the chance presents itself. I have no satisfactory reason why. I suspect that high school players don't want to go to the MAC and sit on the bench, so they look for places where they can play right away, and that is the up and coming teams.

I don't know if the Brookhart firing was justified, but as with the Brandon firing, there was more than just losing involved. The issues with the program this year suggest that it was out of control.

III. So its the Fightin' Dan LeFevour's versus the Banged Up Bobcats. Do you think CMU will win this, or do you think there is a chance that CMU get's "Buffaloed" like Ball State did last year.

No, I don't. I like CMU a lot.

IV. MAC Player of the Year. Dan LeFevour or Freddie Barnes?

This might surprise you, but I do think it is LeFevour. He led his team to an undefeated season and deserves the honor. In most years, Barnes would have been a shoo-in and certainly is deserving if he does win it.

V. What thing about the 2009 MAC season disapointed you the most?

Not too much falls in this category for me. Usually, there is a crazy race down the stretch involving tie-breakers, but that didn't happen this season.

VI. Which teams will be picked to with the whole thing in 2010?

No idea at all. I believe Bowling Green will have to work to get to 7-5 again as it replaces offensive playmakers and most of its defensive starters.

CBSSports Blogpoll is Final and on the AIR

2009-12-02T13:09:00.001-05:00

Savannah State Preview

2009-12-02T09:53:00.000-05:00

The Falcons take the floor for the third time in a week when they host the Savannah State Tigers on Thursday night at Anderson Arena. Savannah plays as a D1 independent, which is a particularly tough way to go.

BG did play them last season in Georgia, and it probably goes down as one of the more disappointing games of the season, at least to Brian Moten, who said this:

"I'll probably never be over that," BG's senior guard said. "Hopefully something good happens like I get married and then I'll get over it."

What happened? Well, BG had a 35-14 lead at the break and lost the game by 3 points. We gave up 43 points in the second half and lost the game, while failing to hit too many shots on our own. Savannah State finished the year at 15-14.

This year, the Tigers are 4-3. Their losses are to Georgetown, North Florida, and Central Connecticut State, and while their wins are over Central Connecticut State (yes, they have played twice), Webber, Western Illinois and Virginia-Wise.

Everything is relative here, the Western Illinois win might be decent and the the North Florida loss probably isn't too bad. There are 2 non D-1 wins on the docket right now.

But I don't know how BG can look past anyone right now.

I think we will see a pretty similar style to ours. Even against that schedule, they are average 53 points per game, which is pretty low. Really low, actually. To their credit, they also allow 53 points per game, which is also really low.

Even on a tempo-neutral basis, there points per possession is only .89 which is lower than BG's (.97). They play a VERY down-tempo game, with 60 possessions per game.....even BG is at 66 so far.

In other words, we should be able to establish our defensive foundation against these guys.

They do not shoot the 3 especially well, but have been very effective on the offensive boards. They commit turnovers on about 25% of their possessions, (BG is 19%), but they also force turnovers on 27.9% of their opponent's possessions, which is really very solid and a big part of their success.

They do give up shots, so if our veteran point guard and teammates can take care of the ball, and we can get shots, we should be able to score some points. Then, this is an opportunity for our defense to really stop somebody, because, based on their performance, these guys are ready to be stopped. They appear to crash the offensive boards, so we need to watch our fundamentals there and then there could be some baskets in transition the other way.

Tracy Rankins is their best scorer (12 ppg) and Arnold Louis (or Louis Arnold, not sure) is the best rebounder with a little over 8 per game (he is only 6'7").

If we're a work in progress, this is an opportunity to get better and get a victory.

Bowl Update----April in Paris, December in Boise

2009-12-01T14:17:00.002-05:00

Ordinarily, tracking this whole bowl thing would be onerous, but in this case, our friends at NIU's Huskie Wire are doing a great job tracking their team, and our team is a mirror image of theirs. Today's news update is that the Humanitarian Bowl dude wants Idaho there (for obvious reasons) and doesn't like the idea of having an Idaho-NIU rematch for their game. Which, they believe, means it could be NIU in the EagleBank bowl and BG in Boise.

Gallows humor: might be the only way we ever win a game in Boise.

And, it would forestall a BG-Marshall rematch in the Eagle Bank Bowl.

Anyway, FWIW.

News from the Nation....

2009-12-01T13:45:00.001-05:00

On a tragic note, Lyndsey Rice of Dublin was killed in an auto accident with her boyfriend in the Columbus area over the week. She was 15, and the sister of Jason Rice, a Falcon football player. Condolences to both families on this tragic loss.

The Sentinel reports that Falcon D-Lineman Kevin Alvarado was arrested yesterday and charged with assault for an incident that occurred in November. All usual cautions to remember that things are not always what they first seem to be.

Finally, on a bizarre note, apparently the Falcon sideline crew committed a scorekeeping error at Saturday's Bowling Green-UWM game. The error credited UWM with 2 extra points. Courtesy the BG News Sports blog:

Since the mistake was not caught before the next dead ball timeout, the points remained on the scoreboard and eventually part of the final score.

Obviously, since the game went into overtime, you would have to think that this was a significant error. Of course, it isn't that clear, since the game would have been played differently with a different score and could easily have ended differently. On the other hand, it wasn't a 20-point game, either.

The BG News excerpts Greg Christopher's statement that says the error was "unfortunate." I am hoping that the full statement contains an apology to the people who paid to see a game that was not what it appeared to be.

Falcons Beat Panthers

2009-12-01T09:29:00.000-05:00

The Falcon men's basketball team picked up their first D-1 win of the season as they held off Florida International to win at Anderson Arena. Early in the second half the Falcons were holding a 17 point lead and looking like they were going to do what every other team has done to FIU this year, which is deliver a double digit defeat.

FIU went on an 8-minute, 23-11 run to get the game back with 5 with about 9 left, and from there on in it was pretty tight. The game never got to within one score until inside a minute (a 3 point lead) and BG's Scott Thomas hit a rare BG free throw to make it 4 points and at that point, the Falcons had salted away the victory.

NCAA Basketball Stats

The key story for the game was Dee Brown. I liked Dee Brown last year and thought he showed potential in limited playing time. He's a barrel-chested guy and doesn't always look like today's ideal college basketball player (long and lean), but he seemed to have some guys and be a heady basketball player and Coach kept saying he was "old school," which I think I understand.

Anyway, Brown had a fantastic, game-saving night against FIU, with 20 precious points. When FIU was on their run, he was the only guy getting anything going offensively for the Falcons, and is probably responsible for keeping the run from being even more severe.

Apparently, he told the media after the game that Isiah Thomas is his hero, and Coach Orr suggested that they should put a picture of Thomas in his locker because Brown "sure played" with Thomas on the floor.

FIU is a small team, and BG did dominate the rebounding game, which FIU has done OK at, despite their size.

NCAA Basketball Stats

It is nice for our guys to win for their confidence and for a little reward for their hard work. To no one's surprise, there is more work to be done.

BG was fine defending in a zone, but tried to switch to a man and that's when FIU went on its run. On the other end of the floor, BG had trouble with FIU's press and with their zone defense. There were 15 turnovers again, and some silly fouls down the stretch that made things more difficult than they needed to be.

Worse of all, perhaps, was the free throw shooting. BG did a great job getting to the line, with 27 free throws against 13 for FIU. Sadly, the Falcons were only barely above 50%, and turned that 14 FT advantage into only 5 actual points. Worse, as Coach Orr said after the game, it seems to be "catching," as players who have formerly shot FTs well have now come down to the level of those who haven't.

Coach Orr said they are trying various things to turn this around, but in the meantime, it makes it harder to win games.

BG did block 7 shots.

Again, though, a victory is a good thing for this team after some tough assignments. I continue to think we have the ability to be very competitive this season if we can continue to improve, particularly over the next month.

Bowl Projections

2009-11-30T12:07:00.000-05:00

The ESPN Bowl projections are in for this week. Both "experts" are expecting BG to go to the EagleBank Bowl in DC for a rematch with Marshall, with NIU going to the Humanitarian Bowl to play Idaho.

On an interesting note, they also think that CMU will play Notre Dame in the GMAC, which could be really interesting and does ensure that a very good CMU team will get well-deserved attention. They expect Temple to play Rutgers in Toronto, and Ohio is expected to play Middle Tennessee State in the Little Caesar's Bowl.

I'm assuming these are getting to be pretty obvious, since there is not much difference between their "projections." Time will tell.