The Cincinnati Bearcats, despite their best efforts to lose, beat the East Carolina Pirates last Thursday night to keep their AAC title hopes alive. The big 54-46 victory for the ‘Cats was like a microcosm of their 2014 season as it featured a simultaneously explosive and self-destructive offense, a porous and mistake-prone defense, and mind-boggling coaching decisions.
With a sneaky tough road game against UConn coming up this week, Tommy Tuberville and his team cannot afford to look back or ahead to Temple and beyond, but we can. So with that, here’s a look at the good, bad and ugly from Cincinnati’s Week 12 win over ECU.
The Good
In a wild win that was almost a loss, it is easy to find a lot of negative takeaways, but in the end the Bearcats got a win and that is the obvious priority going into any game. Coming into the year, this game was circled by many on the schedule as the one that could decide who wins the conference, and that still could be the case as Cincinnati now finds itself in a tie with Memphis and UCF at the top. UC will need some outside help to win the title outright, but will at least get a piece of the title if it wins out.
Remember that one time when Tuberville waited to announce his starter until right before kickoff and said all week long that both Gunner Kiel and Munchie Legaux will both play regardless? Yeah, about that. Kiel was named the starter against ECU, and Legaux never saw the field. Although some of his mistakes will be talked about in “the bad” from this game, I think Kiel’s performance can mostly be qualified as good considering he threw for 436 yards and four touchdowns while completing 65.9 percent of his passes. Even better than his numbers is the fact that he looked healthy finally, and appears to have made it through a full game without any additional harm done to his ribs. That fact, by the way, can be attributed to excellent offensive line play for the Bearcats as Kiel had a clean pocket most of the night, was rarely hit and only sacked once.
Freshman kicker Andrew Gantz earned MVP honors in my instant analysis article from the press box at Paul Brown Stadium Thursday night after he nailed the go-ahead field goal from 47 yards with just 15 seconds left in the game. Gantz’s solid play has turned a 2013 weakness into a 2014 strength for the Bearcats, and he has been named a Lou Groza award semi-finalist which is given to college football’s best kicker each season.
The Bad
The “worst” bad of this game for the Bearcats was certainly the turnovers. Kiel threw three interceptions and lost a fumble, and all four of those turnovers came on his team’s side of the field and led to 23 points for ECU. Cincinnati could have dominated this game early, but the turnovers put the defense in some bad spots and kept the Pirates in the game.
Speaking of the defense, it looks like the “improvement” the Bearcats D was thought to have made was more a result of playing SMU, USF and Tulane than anything else. So, Tuberville can probably get those “Bad News Bearcats” t-shirts made anytime he wants, because this unit just got torched for 572 yards and 46 points. Granted, the offensive mistakes did put the defense’s feet to the fire a few times and ECU’s offense was ranked 4th in total and 25th in scoring offense coming into the game, but it was more of the same missed assignments, poor tackling, mental breakdowns and big penalties that plagued Cincinnati’s defense yet again.
The Ugly
Is there anywhere else to look for the ugly than Tommy Tuberville’s decision to go for it on 4th-and-2 from his own 33 yard-line with a five-point lead and just over two minutes left in the game? The play-call from Eddie Gran wasn’t much better than the decision itself, as they ran a speed option with Kiel and Rod Moore as the pitch man. It was covered well by ECU, and Kiel, trying to make a play of nothing, pitched it late and behind Moore. Lamar Ivey recovered the loose ball for the Pirates, and they scored a little over a minute later to take a 46-45 lead with 1:02 left. If not for Kiel leading the ‘Cats into field goal range and Gantz making a 47-yarder Tuberville would have been CRUSHED by the media, fans and other critics.
During his post-game press conference, when asked about the decision Tuberville said, “If I knew we were gonna run that play like that I promise you we would’ve punted,” and later added, “But it was a stupid call.” Tuberville also thanked his players for bailing him out, and any time a coach has to do that, it is obvious a critical error was made, regardless of the result.
Looking Ahead
Cincinnati will travel to UConn for an 8 p.m. kickoff against the Huskies in a match-up with an opening line that favors the Bearcats by 11 points. UC will need to be careful in this game as UConn has played much better lately and beat UCF at home by eight points just three weeks ago. With tougher competition left on the schedule in Temple and Houston, Cincinnati cannot afford to overlook this game as it needs to win them all to have a chance at the AAC crown.
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