The Unofficial Furman Football Page

They're beating NC State.

WCU lead after the first quarter, tied at the half, lead after 3 quarters - NCState scored 21 in the 4th quarter for a 38-21 come from behind win.

FUTex wrote: ↑

Thu Aug 29, 2024 8:28 pm

They're beating NC State.

Shouldn’t have said anything. I bet you didn’t even knock on wood.

Aggressive West-to-East tunneling by the little people. Good effort, but they probably ran out of tunnel roof supports just past the RDU Airport.

Looking at the box score, it seems like WCU followed "the formula" for staying in these games - they didn't turn it over and didn't give up a lot of big plays.

NCSU had 520+ yards of offense on 73 plays. It just seems like they really couldn't land the big punches to knock WCU out of it.

The Cats didn't do much on the ground outside of a 50 yard scamper by Gonzalez. The passing stats suggest a pretty methodical dink and dunk approach. They maintained possession, slowed the game down, and let their defense keep them in it.

Good showing by them. Not sure any of us expected them to stick with NCSU.

Good defensive effort until late. Early on it looked like WCU had a man in the NC State huddle.

I was VERY impressed with the Catamounts. VERY. In the end they wore down defensively (broken tackles etc. and a late TD run when it was really 31-21) but their offense got 361 yards vs what should be a good ACC defense. to me, that's the equivalent of 500 yards vs some FCS defenses. I was very impressed.

Usually WCU (all O, no D) gets blown out vs FBS 45-10. I would also be concerned if I were an NC State fan. Either Western is really good or State has some issues. The truth probably lies in the middle

SoCon won't be a cakewalk this year.

Davemeister wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 30, 2024 10:54 am

SoCon won't be a cakewalk this year.

AGREE - for those that postulated "yeah we lost a lot but so did everyone else... " well, that didn't look like a Western team that had two guys playing for ACC Pitt now

Davemeister wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 30, 2024 10:54 am

SoCon won't be a cakewalk this year.

Was there some thought it wouldn't be?

If 6 weeks from now NC State sucks and they are proven to be over-rated, will the “ I told you crowd” still be drooling over Western?

gman84 wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 30, 2024 12:55 pm

If 6 weeks from now NC State sucks and they are proven to be over-rated, will the “ I told you crowd” still be drooling over Western?

Western deserves credit for hanging with a P4 team regardless of how good they end up being.

I do not believe any Furman fan should be under the impression that Western was not going to be a good football team. They're going to be tough.

Western threw or attempted to throw almost every down. They only tried 13 running plays the whole game.

Guys, it's a long season.

Western looked like it was going to be hard to beat to start last year, but then Reid gets hurt, they start playing pretty sloppy, and they end up missing the playoffs after getting into the top 10 in the polls. 2 years ago, NC State went 8-4 with 4 QBs. Last year it looked like they may only win 3-4 and they ended up going 9-4 with bad QB play and only 1 RB who might be a starter on other ACC teams (and no run game to speak of, #119 in the country).

It's a long season. Things change week to week. Regardless of how either team finishes up, I think Western deserves credit for what they did on defense in this game.

Some of the takes around this game are weird. I don't think giving Western some credit for doing certain things well that they haven't done well for years (playing defense/tackling) is heaping excessive praise on them. If 5 games go by and WCU is 5-1 with wins over Montana and a supposedly good Elon squad, does that mean we can't beat them? If they then lose their next 6, while that would be an epic collapse it doesn't mean they weren't a good team for those 6 games.

These are all hypotheticals, and again, it's a long season. We'll see where it goes. I'll be happy when we have actual Furman football to talk about.

apaladin wrote:Western threw or attempted to throw almost every down. They only tried 13 running plays the whole game.

Western's ADOT (average depth of target) was 4.7. They were not going to give State a chance to apply any pressure, and traditionally State does have a good run defense. They got the ball out quick and made State make tackles. It was a good strategy for this game, but I don't think you'll see Western play that way the rest of the year. They're going to look to throw deeper routes giving some teams chances to get to him. At least that's what I would expect.

The Jackal wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 30, 2024 11:51 am

Davemeister wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 30, 2024 10:54 am

SoCon won't be a cakewalk this year.

Was there some thought it wouldn't be?

Not on my part.