Is West Liberty that bad?

[Sportsnut]

Looking at the box score. 26 rushing attempts for a minus 35 yards. Next week may be the last game they could be favored. On par for a 2 win season.

[timbertopper]

Re: Is West Liberty that bad?

Yet they were winning until the starting QB went down late in the third quarter. Go figure. Backup QBs don't inspire much confidence and O-line has been a dumpster fire to this point. Defense held up pretty well until running out of gas after being on the field all night.

[Sportsnut]

Re: Is West Liberty that bad?

Timber, the backup QB has been the starter the last several years. This program is going nowhere. How much longer to basketball?

[boatcapt]

Re: Is West Liberty that bad?

WLU's defense played very well against a UC offense that averaged 500 yards of offense before last night. Unfortunantly, the offense didn't do anything to support them and they just flat ran out of gas in the second half. Offense in the first half was bad...Only way they scored 3 points was of an int by the D that they "converted" to a FG. Still, we were up 3-0 at the half. Second half we did show some signs of offensive life answering UC's long time consuming drive with one of our own to grab the lead back at 10-7. Unfortunantly our starting QB (who wasn't lighting the place up but at least had lead one TD drive) went down and the game was effectively over with neither Colabella or O'Connor able to mount any sort of coherent offensive possession.

Even tired, WLU's defense held up it's end of the bargain holding conferences #2 offense to 14 points below their season average. Offense was (being nice here) "ineffective" before the injury to Phillips and a dumpster fire after.

Minus 35 rushing yards...Yea, that's going to happen when you give up 11 sacks for 77 negative yards!!! Not that WLU was setting the world on fire on the ground anyway (minus stack yardage they had 42 rushing yards), but +42 does at least sound better that -35!!!

This is starting to remind me of the 2013 season were we had a really strong D and an offense that struggled mightily to score 13 points per game. We won 3 games that year so it's right in line with my 4 win prediction.

[boatcapt]

Re: Is West Liberty that bad?

Yet they were winning until the starting QB went down late in the third quarter. Go figure. Backup QBs don't inspire much confidence and O-line has been a dumpster fire to this point. Defense held up pretty well until running out of gas after being on the field all night.

Last night, YES!! Complete dumpster fire! 12 sacks and -35 rushing yards are the proof. But the first two games they played well in leading a rushing attach that averaged 225 yards per game and had two backs that averaged over 100 yards a game. Last night they got manhandled by a defensive line that was clearly superior and made them look silly. Hard telling for sure this early but the good news is that UC is probably the best DL we'll play this year.

Most worrying thing to me is QB Phillips down with ice on his knee, RB Westbrooke did not play last night (injured?), CB Ojo went down and LB Clarke went down. If you had to pick four "stars" on this team...that would be them!!! If all or some part of them are down for an extended period of time, winning goes from to difficult to almost impossible!

[CelticCoach]

[Dirtybird]

Re: Is West Liberty that bad?

Really impressed with UC's defensive ends. They were listed on their website as 6-4 240 and 6-5 275. They were extremely fast and when they didn't go around they went through WL's line. With that being said I think those 2 ends are going to have a lot of success against most offensive lines they come up against.

[boatcapt]

Re: Is West Liberty that bad?

Think you are right. They are the class of the league thus far. Any team that beats UC is going to have to figure a way to contain both of them!