gopher team struggling?

[KD6-3.7]

look at the scores of the first seven games. scored more than 20 in each. last 5 scored less than 20 in each, other than wisconsin--in which game i think that we played well for the first half, and some of the fourth quarter. i know that the first seven included NC but two of the four teams are going to bowls--NIU and FLA ATL.

this only tells us what we already know--the offense is struggling. my thought is that our young team was just worn down by the long season. if the team can regroup, get healthy and have some good practices (incorporating the new wrinkles of the new o-line coach) we should be playing more like the first half of the season.

i think that if the offense can eat up some possession time and score 17 to 20 points, then the defense--which has been bad in games when the offense doesn't allow the defense to regroup, should cause some turnovers and maybe score some points.

 

[metrolax]

You're right....

there's no reason to be glum here. Some coaches or teams play real well
in bowls, while some do not. It'll be interesting to see how well Brewster
does in this. Mastering the regular season is one thing. Mastering bowl
prep often is another.

Young teams do wear down. The late season swoon was not unexpected
by me and others. Playing at the Dome also hurt rather than helped this
team.

If Brewster proves to be at least a competent bowl-prep coach, I expect
the Gophers to play well. KU should be the favorite, to be sure, but our
youngsters can give a good account of themselves.

You need to look at this game as a possible portend to 2009.

 

[Go Gophers Rah]

Does anyone recall when Weber had his surgery? Could that have been a contributing factor?

Just to put the season in perspective:

• We won 7 games.
• We lost one game by 13 points to the #9 or #10 team in the nation.
• We lost two games (Northwestern and Wisconsin) in the waning minutes and played very competitively.
• We played really badly in two games (Michigan and Iowa)

I am very happy with how we played 10 of our games this season and dissapointed in two of them. I sure hope the coaches can figure out what went so horribly wrong versus Iowa and Michigan and fix the problem within 4 weeks.

Go Gophers!

 

[Art Vandelay]

Weber had surgery prior to the Illinois game...

Also won two games in the waning minutes...NIU and Illinois...so that's a wash.

The loss to OSU was worse than 13 points because of the garbage TD's against the 3rd stringers.

 

[Go Gophers Rah]

Art... finding the grey cloud inside the silver lining? I'll never cease to be amazed.

(does anyone know how to use the "ignore" function like on Yuku?)

 

[Khaliq]

I don't know, I know the topic has probably been hashed over to death here but I tend to agree with him that the Ohio State game was more of a domination than the scoreboard indicated. That's not necessarily a really bad thing, the programs are in two very different places right now, but I wouldn't use that game as a positive.