Aug. 28, 2008
(11:17 p.m.): Well, what do we take from that? Pretty good performance from the Bearcats, but not outstanding. Some mistakes, most of which are probably fixable. As Mo Egger and I talked about, UC certainly didn't struggle - which would have been cause for concern. Overall, I'd say a pretty nice job for the Bearcats.
BK's opening statement:
"Good start for us, offensively and defensively," he said. "I liked the way we started the game. We got control immediately and left very little doubt about the control of the game. We talked to our football team about how Eastern Kentucky has a lot of tradition. They've won a lot of football games. We didn't want to give them a lot of confidence early on. We had to exert ourselves early on. When you win as much as they do, if you give them a spark and you give them an opportunity, they're going to fight you. They fought us, but we got a foothold early on, controlled the football offensively, got some points and defensively really limited their ability to push the ball down the field."
"I felt comfortable out there playing," Grutza said. "We've got some great, great receivers and great running backs and my line protected for me. Even though we did well, we still have a lot of room to improve."
Dominick Goodman - who finished with 10 catches for 144 yards and two TDs and moved into a tie for second on the school's touchdown reception list (17 to tie with Deno Foster), third in career receptions (130) and eighth on the career receiving yards list (1,628 yards) - didn't see much of a difference between Grutza and Ben Mauk.
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"Grutza was the quarterback my freshman and sophomore years, so there's really no difference with Grutza being in there," Goodman said. "We're still comfortable with Grutza out there. We showed out there we didn't miss a step."
Considering C.J. Cobb is out also, that's not good for UC.
"Tell me about it," BK said. "It's a real concern. You saw our second group out there (made up mostly of redshirt and true freshmen). It's not a good situation. We can't afford to get another guy injured. It gets desperate."
To Goebel, the experience was almost surreal.
"A lot of emotion," he said. "It was unbelievable to be out there. I was so nervous when I first went out there. They called the first few plays, and I was still kind of giddy. It's really different than practice. Against our defense, you can't cut. Our defense is so good at swarming the ball. Our offensive line was cutting the defenders and the holes are there and I was just making cuts. It was easy for me."
"My first offensive play was awesome," Barwin said. "I'm just happy they scored or I would have been angry."
The good stuff: Katzonthecats' picking ability obviously hasn't lost a step while making the move to this blog. Earlier in the day, he predicted a 38-13 UC win. 40-7 is pretty close. Not the best prediction ever, but hey, it's still early in the season.
The bad stuff: The special teams, featuring most prominently PK Jake Rogers. We'll get into this more Friday, but here's a preview of what BK said: "Special teams stunk. It was terrible. Very disappointing. I really felt like with the amount of time I spent on special teams, I was disappointed in our play. Awful special teams."
The semi-important stuff: Barwin was impressed with the play EKU ran to score its only TD. Said Barwin: "That play is pretty nasty that they ran two times in a row to get in the end zone. They ran a zone read and the quarterback pulled (the ball) and instead of running it or going with the option - which most teams do and they had been doing - the wide receiver ran a slant. We'll probably do it next week." When I was coming up to the press box after the news conference, I overheard one of the EKU assistants describing it to somebody on the phone.
