AJ asked if this game was an aberration from Rettig or the start of something big. I am leaning towards the start of something big. As a reminder, Flutie's biggest day at BC all-time was also in a loss. I will have a post later this week on how Rettig's day -- even though a huge statistical leap -- was not a fluke.
The Patriots picked up Matt Tennant on the waiver wire.
Here is another post from Ryan Anderson's Spain trip. The team lost their final game of the tour.
The women's soccer team's dominance on their west coast swing continued.
Field Hockey lost to UMass.
The women's soccer team's dominance on their west coast swing continued.
Field Hockey lost to UMass.
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26 comments:
Surprised about Tennant. From drafted to expected starter to cut! Hope he catches on with Pats.
I see Quigley made the Bears and is a Real NFL player - for now as the injured all star punter returns soon
Damik Scafe was cut by chargers but made the chargers practice squad. Same for Donnie fletcher with jets - practice squad.
Unless the opponent just cleared their bench, that 11 point loss was pretty good for the young Eagles. I don't know a lot about Euro Leagues, but FC Barcelona Regal has been around since the 40s and according to a euro league website, won the Spanish National league and lost to eventual winner (Olympiacos) is the equivalent of the soccer Champions League for Basketball. Unlike some of the earlier teams, this one has several Americans and players from around Europe.
Good stuff, looks like they got some real competition on this trip. With Doug Martin's offense clicking, am I wrong to be excited for the first time in a while about BC football and basketball?
Another note on Martin's offense. Chase needs to work on his deep ball, teams are going to start sitting on those slants, opening up opportunities for double moves for our WRs. Hopefully Chase can take advantage for some big plays.
Also, I'm sure it was covered in Saturday's game chat, but what on earth was Spaz thinking sitting on the ball with 1 min left in the half with Freese kicking well, the offense clicking, and the D unable to stop Miami? Does he still not realize that each possession matters?
Final note, Valencia, the team we lost 93-66 against in game three in Spain is another top Euroleague team, and won the Eurocup two years ago.
Seems like Donahue scheduled a nice mix of competition. The first two games were against Division II teams (like soccer, in Europe, basketball leagues have several divisions and use a relegation system, so the top teams each year move up a division and the worst teams drop, like if Bobcats and Timberwolves were dropped down to the NBDL last year, kind of cool, wish the US had an equivalent). We beat last years top Div. II team, and lost to a more middling team. These teams are made up of primarily younger Spanish players, with at max one or two foreigners.
Then we played last years #3 and #1 Division I teams (Valencia Basket and FC Bareclona Regal respectively). These teams are made up of older and more experienced Spanish players as well as players from throughout Europe and 1-2 Americans. Seems like the adjustment caught us off guard against Valencia and we were crushed. Tough start against Barcelona, but we rallied extremely well to pull within 8 before losing by 11.
Spaz sat on the ball with a min. left because our RB had just fumbled the previous play. Actually didn't have a problem with it for once.
Ryan -- the defense of the sitting on the ball because of the fumble is illogical. Others were peddling that on Saturday. the fact that Spaz was running the ball on the first play with a minute left means he was going to run the clock out. we fumbled, and the next play we took a knee. doesn't change the fact that a team who came out looking to move the ball would've gone shotgun 4 wide and tried to throw downfield. more spaz cowardice at the end of the first half cost us points and all of our momentum.
spaz has to realize that he's going to get canned at the end of this year barring an extraordinary result, so he might as well stop coaching so conservatively so he can never be blamed. take some chances and try to win a game FOR ONCE! we have yet to see that from him. just open it up man, you're toast anyway. if in 2 weeks we are in a similar situation vs. northwestern (offense has been rolling, get the ball back with over a minute and a timeout) and he tries to throw down field and its a pick 6 (which is apparently what he's so afraid of), i will applaud the guy for trying to take advantage of the situation. i will never applaud him for "playing it safe" -- we are simply not good enough to play it safe. we have to accept some risk if we want a chance at winning 7 or 8 games.
Ryan,
Read what El Miz said again, I couldn't have said it better. No need to make up apologies for his poor game management.
With a minute left at the end of the half after Rettig had already thrown an interception and we had blown a 14 point lead, I don't mind as much that Spaz played it conservatively.
What I do mind is the numerous fumbles our RB's produced. It looked like throwing the ball would have been safer.
With all the fumbles and dropped passes "going for it" at the end of the first half would have been STUPID. ANY mistake on that part of field would have given Miami points.
Completely ILLOGICAL to go for it.
. . He went for it at the end of the game when he should NOT have and we did not score. You take the three points there after the third down and the onside kick. You also have the third down play reviewed.
Knuckle,
While I agree that the third down play should have been reviewed/challenged, I can understand why we immediately went for it on fourth down. If we had lost that challenge, we would have been without a timeout for the ensuing drive. It would have taken time to set up the field goal team, and with seconds counting down, I can see why we went for it. The QB sneak essentially gave us another TD, but the refs blew the call.
I don't disagree that we could have gone for the automatic and avoided the mess, but I also think that would have cost us some time.
Some of you guys clearly don't watch a lot of college football. Dozens of coaches, including several with championship rings on their fingers, do exactly what Spaz did on Saturday. Your quarterback earlier completely changed the momentum of the game with a Pick 6. You are only down 1. Why risk going down by 8? Also, they call it a 2-minute drill because you typically need 2 minutes to run it successfully. If he had 90 seconds or more, I could see being more aggressive. I am not a Spaz apologist, but some of you are insane. The same people blasting him for going down 1 at half are pissed that he went for it on 4th and inches at the end of the game.
Spaz for once did not lose this game. The players did not execute. It's on them. We don't like Spaz and feel he is not a good fit for BC. But let's not criticize him for doing what some of the best coaches in America consistently do. It only makes us look ridiculously stupid.
I was going to remain silent on this thread until I read Eagleboston's last comment.
"Spaz for once did not lose this game."
That's just false. He may not be the primary person to blame, but he is definitely not devoid of blame. There were 2 game-changing plays that should have been reviewed before he finally did review one (the booth seemingly lost the buzzer to the refs as well). The sideline run should have been looked at and the 3rd down play - that is on Spaz. Additionally, the 10 yard cushion is Spaz's defensive scheme. Going up by 14, getting little pressure on their qb, and giving them that cushion allowed them to swing momentum back, easily driving down the field. I don't think we blitzed until the 3rd quarter.
Agree wholeheartedly with eagleboston on this one. Also not a Spaz apologist but he definitely didn't blow this game for us. Sure you can find a few plays to nitpick over but the same could be said of any coach in any given game.
Eagleboston, Walter, and others enjoy to engage in revisionist history. according to your accounts, BC had lost all momentum and was lucky to go into the half down only 1. LOL. lets look at what REALLY happened instead of imagining up a reality where spaz coached admirably.
the 2nd quarter begin tied at 14. rettig had just thrown a pick 6. all momentum gained from throttling the U in the first 8 minutes or so (and scoring 14 points) was gone.
BC's first drive of 2nd quarter: 66 yards in 9 plays. entire drive took 4:07. rettig 3/3 for 51 yards. we settle for a field goal after fumbling on 3rd down. BC up 17-14.
miami's first drive of 2nd q: duke johnson breaks off another big run for a TD on their 4th play. 21-17 miami.
BC's second drive of the 2nd quarter: 58 yards in 12 plays. entire drive took just over 5 minutes. rettig 3-5 for 54 yards. the 2 "incompletions" were drops if i recall correctly -- both evans and miller. freese kicks a FG from 37 yards away (aka the 20 yard line). BC is now down 21-20.
after a miami drive stalls BC gets the ball back on their own 20 (not to mention the muffed snap which almost set us up in great field position; i wonder if spaz would've taken a knee in the red zone?).
BC has had 2 drives this quarter, each time we moved the ball with ease up the field. one of the ONLY advantages BC has is the fact that we have a competent QB who has 20+ career starts under his belt. he should be able to get us 50 yards down the field with over a minute, the clock stopping on first downs, and a time out. i have little doubt he could, but apparently his coach did, because he ran the ball (which we almost fumbled anyway! LOL the football gods have no mercy on the coward that is Spaziani).
rettig had hit each of his targets in this quarter if i'm not mistaken, going 3 for 3 on the first drive and then 3 for 5 on the second. freese had been hitting his field goals so even if you are going to play for ANY sort of points (which is decidedly the right call, otherwise you are just wasting possessions), all you need to do is move the ball from your own 20 to miami's 20 in 68 seconds, with a timeout and the clock stopping after 1sts to help you. Spaz F-ed up, just like he always does, by playing it safe and making the ultra-conservative play call.
look -- spaz didn't lose this game. i blamed the Duke loss on him last year when he didn't center the ball -- thats football 101, even if the kick is from the freaking 5 yard line. (there's a reason extra points are from right down the middle and not the has mark.) this game had other culprits -- the poor tackling on D, the fumbles from our experienced RBs, the drops from our WRs. but let us face the facts -- Spaz doesn't understand the fundamental concept of not wasting a possession. moreover, his coaching intuition seems to suck the life out of the team and signal "i dont trust anyone enough to F it up so we are just going to take a knee. if we don't win, i will blame you in the press conference even though i as coach could have done more and put my neck out on the line for once." it is poor leadership, poor coaching, and the sign of a career assistant coach who is in over his head. Spaz didn't lose the game, but he proved again he has no business as a head coach.
The fans in my section agree with El Miz - keep playing with over a minute to go until half time. We need a different mindset this year.
Send the message to the team - we are playing to win, not to keep it close with a chance to win in the 4th quarter. There's a difference.
We didn't have a huge problem with Spaz taking the knee this particular time, or we weren't surprised shall I say - but wished we were aggressive instead.
Several other observations.
The PA system at Alumni is terrible and needs fixing. Fans can't understand 75% of what the announcer is saying.
At halftime with the Montgomery Family, Gene DeFilippo looked lost and like he shouldn't have been there.
I suppose they will give him a cake when he leaves, at least.
I'm with El Miz on this one. Plenty of blame to go around, but this was classic Coach Coward.
His clear lack of confidence in his players during games and "damning with faint praise" in press conferences just infuriates me.
Va Tech started this drive on the ONE YARD LINE with 120 to play in the 2nd half. they ran a QB sneak and then tried to drive up the field. frank beamer is a successful CFB coach who plays to win, not a loser like spaz (sub 500 against real d1 teams) who plays to save his own ass.
El Miz, I've seen Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Kirk Ferentz, Les Miles, and many others all take a knee in the same situation. 3 of those aforementioned have championship rings.
Oh and Chris Speilman who knows a hell of a lot more about football than you was highly critical of Beamer taking a risk in his own end of the field. There are a lot of things to be critical of Spaz about, but it drives me nuts when people who don't understand college football make ridiculous complaints.
If Spaz tried to Drive the ball at the end of the second quarter and something "bad" happended all you SUCKERS would be saying "Spaz doesn't care about the team. All he cares about is trying to keep his job" or some derivation of that.
I don't care about momentum. The momentum turns when coaches do dumb shit and try to drive the ball starting from their own 20 with a minute to go.
Also, does anyone know whose responsibility it is to call timeouts and booth reviews? Is Spaz doing that or is Martin doing that? From what I read in Globe on Sunday Rettig seemed to infer the 4th down call was his and/or that he ran the play to quickly.
Either way Spaz did NOT blow this game. Miller dopped 2 TD's, Rettig threw a pick for a TD and fumbled on the 4 yard line, Kimble had the worst fumble I have seen in years(David Green) and the Defense was Terrible on 3rd down(stats say 11-22. seemed ALOT worse). In all honesty if Rettig or Evans got the ball clearly over the goaline in the 4th Q we might be talking about a different outcome.
This all adds up to the players losing the game.
EL Miz,
I just got through your dissertation and it is scattered.
You seem to assess the loss to the players. Then somehow trash Spaz because of it. You have a warped personal vendetta against a neutered head coach. I don't even think he was wearing a HEAD SET during the game to hear the plays or communicate upstairs. He did not have ANYTHING to do with the loss because he really WASN'T involved.
WAKE UP. Spaz is a lameduck. Trashing him is moronic because he is involved marginally with in-game decisions.
All the articles over summer talked about Rettig being given the responsiblity of making more decisions. For everything he did it was his mistakes that cost the team the game: Interception for TD(7pts), Fumble on the goaline(4 pts), QB sneak(3 points). He cost them FOURTEEN POINTS!!!!!
I was not necessarily opposed to the decision to run out the first half. I would like to have seen Spaz go for some points but I could understand his reasons for running out the half. However, what infuriated me was if you decide to run out the half, take a damn knee. There's absolutely no reason to run the ball in that situation. It can only lead to trouble. BC was extremely lucky that it recovered the fumble or it would have been down even more going into the half. As for adjustments, they were nonexistent in the defensive side of the ball. This ridiculous 10 yard cushion has to go. Teams with mediocre QBs (like Miami) will eat us alive in the future. Most college-level QBs can make those short 5 yard throws. BC needs to pinch the receivers and make the QBs throw down the field. The mediocre QBs will be a lot more inaccurate and there will be a much bigger risk of turnovers. Further, it would actually give our pass rush or blitz (when BC does blitz every blue moon) more time to get to the QB. The reason why BC's blitz never got to the QB was because the ball was out extremely quickly.
After the fumble and the tentative way we ran the play, I thought to myself, "Take a knee before you fumble the next one away." So I can't fault Spaz on that decision. The question I have is why were we running a line buck in the first place? There was plenty of time to at least get into FG range. I think it is as much Martin's call as it is Spaz's.
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