On To WCU-THE BATTLE FOR 5th PLACE

[apaladin]

Furman and WCU are tied for fifth place at 2-3. The winner will take sole possession. In a lot of cases comparing scores is futile and means little. Not in this case as we have four common opponents which is a good sample size.
Mercer- FU L- 23-3. WCU L- 34-24
Wofford- FU W- 42-20. WCU W- 41-21
Citadel- FU W -24-14. WCU W- 45-31
UTC - FU L- 13-3. WCU L- 45-17
Furman and WCU beat the same 2 bottom feeders and lost to the same 2 good teams.
Averages against these 4 common opponents:
Scoring: Furman 18. WCU 28.25
Points Given Up: FU 15.25. WCU 32.75
Conclusion from abive:
Furman has a defense WCU does not.
WCU has an offense Furman does not.
Prediction: Tossup. May come down to who wants 5th place the most.

[gofurman]

Furman and WCU are tied for fifth place at 2-3. The winner will take sole possession. In a lot of cases comparing scores is futile and means little. Not in this case as we have four common opponents which is a good sample size.
Mercer- FU L- 23-3. WCU L- 34-24
Wofford- FU W- 42-20. WCU W- 41-21
Citadel- FU W -24-14. WCU W- 45-31
UTC - FU L- 13-3. WCU L- 45-17
Furman and WCU beat the same 2 bottom feeders and lost to the same 2 good teams.
Averages against these 4 common opponents:
Scoring: Furman 18. WCU 28.25
Points Given Up: FU 15.25. WCU 32.75
Conclusion from abive:
Furman has a defense WCU does not.
WCU has an offense Furman does not.
Prediction: Tossup. May come down to who wants 5th place the most.

Yeppers. Quite simply it’s strength on strength - their Ô v our D. And weakness on weakness- our O v their D
WCU also gets a bump in that they have been improving… which is to be expected with a new staff and players learning. I think they may have found a decent coach.

Sadly I’d say it’s a 50/50 game which is not good considering it’s year 5(?) of CCH recruiting and plan vs year 1 of new WCU coach !

[apaladin]

Just went back and watched the last 5 plus minutes. That was really disheartening to watch, the way we gave up. Over on AGS Mocs fan said utc peeps in the stands were shaking their heads and didn’t understsnd Hendrix not using the timeouts etc. Anyway, on to the mountains.

[wcugrad95]

Western guy, so take what you will from this. WCU came out much more competitive at the first of the season than we were in the past 2 years, had a bit of a lull (bad loss to Gardner-Webb), and has looked much better the last two weeks - but against what now are clearly the worst 2 teams in the SoCon. Everybody has to battle through injuries, but WCU was not a very deep team and we were in really bad shape through several games - starting our 4th string center in back-to-back games earlier. Our bye a few weeks ago helped, our team health has gotten better, and the team is finally starting to grasp the new systems on offense and defense (every coach is new, and we had literally 20 days of practice under this regime to get ready for the season).

As pointed out, this will definitely be strength on strength/weakness on weakness. The Western defense has shown signs of life these past 2 weeks, but I still feel this will come down to what pretty much all games do when teams are not in a total mismatch - which team protects the ball and makes the fewest stupid mistakes will win the game. If WCU converts 3rd downs and scores TDs vs FGs when we are in the red zone we win. If Furman has a bunch of big plays or WCU goes back to our early season ways and has a bunch of turnovers, the Paladins win.

I know it is not a battle for the top of the conference or trying to position for a playoff bid, but I think this has a chance to be a really good game. I am also hopeful for a very large crowd in Cullowhee. Safe travels for anybody heading to the game.

[apaladin]

wcugrad95- you should hope the Cats don’t have a lot of success on first and second downs. FU really struggles to get off the field on 3rd and, 10, 15, 20. Us Furman fans would much rather see a 3rd and 2 or 3 rather than a 3rd and 15.:

[gofurman]

Western guy, so take what you will from this. WCU came out much more competitive at the first of the season than we were in the past 2 years, had a bit of a lull (bad loss to Gardner-Webb), and has looked much better the last two weeks - but against what now are clearly the worst 2 teams in the SoCon. Everybody has to battle through injuries, but WCU was not a very deep team and we were in really bad shape through several games - starting our 4th string center in back-to-back games earlier. Our bye a few weeks ago helped, our team health has gotten better, and the team is finally starting to grasp the new systems on offense and defense (every coach is new, and we had literally 20 days of practice under this regime to get ready for the season).

As pointed out, this will definitely be strength on strength/weakness on weakness. The Western defense has shown signs of life these past 2 weeks, but I still feel this will come down to what pretty much all games do when teams are not in a total mismatch - which team protects the ball and makes the fewest stupid mistakes will win the game. If WCU converts 3rd downs and scores TDs vs FGs when we are in the red zone we win. If Furman has a bunch of big plays or WCU goes back to our early season ways and has a bunch of turnovers, the Paladins win.

I know it is not a battle for the top of the conference or trying to position for a playoff bid, but I think this has a chance to be a really good game. I am also hopeful for a very large crowd in Cullowhee. Safe travels for anybody heading to the game.

95, Good stuff. Appreciate the comments. You seem pretty fair/objective

Questions - who is hurt at this point?
Our final injuries are - on o - our starting Center maybe ? Our star RB Wynn maybe? On D the list is longer…. Starting DL Sochovka. Been gone all year. Another DL maybe? Starting LB Wilkins. Another LB possibly now (Bryce Stanfield? Or another. Sorry for confusion). And staring CB Yates. That’s possibly 5 guys on D. Yet our D continues to impress —. Loss 13-3 to UTC despite missing guys at all three levels. Sadly, our O- despite relative health - is far from impressive. Far from it. Basically 140 yards vs UTC

I expect your team has improved and changed. What are you all good at on O and d ? What are your worst abilities?

Our worst is the ability to generate offense if we can’t run. Make us a passing team and we lose. Simple as that. Best is probably RUN defense - though. All of our D is great. The only frustration is yes, we do seem to allow too many 3rd and long conversion.

[wcugrad95]

Kerwin and his son Kade Bell (our OC) are known for offense. They brought in several players they had experience with or recruited at Valdosta State and Tusculum. I was a bit underwhelmed at that prospect initially because let's face it - if those guys were really good they would not have been playing at that level of football. But it was pretty smart given the time the staff had. Plugging in Rogan Wells at QB who had years of experience in the offense gave us the best chance to hit the ground running on that side of the ball. We have a couple of transfer RBs who are shifty enough, but they play over a very talented returning RB because they know the system better and they are threats in the passing game. Raphael Williams is a RS Freshman WR who looks underwhelming because he is small, but he looks like an All-SoCon type guy when he is on the field (he has 3 games with double-digit receptions, five 100-plus yard games, and is coming off 16 receptions for 177 yds and 2 TDs against Woffy).

Defense is still the weak spot, but the team has played with a lot more heart this year versus the last several seasons. We had some awful days against Oklahoma (most people do) and Gardner-Webb, but I was very surprised/pleased with the way they stayed disciplined and controlled the run game of Citadel. Our Achilles heel the last 3 or 4 years on Defense was giving up big plays and tons of rushing yards, and that was still a problem early this year. It has been better than last two games, but again that was against Citadel and Wofford so hard to tell.

All-in-all, this team has been competitive in most games (the "coulda/shoulda" variety against EKU and Samford that easily could have been wins), looked awful against Oklahoma and Gardner-Webb, and a mixture against teams like Mercer and Chatty. The Mercer game was one of those where if we didn't have some bad turnovers it could have been even closer, but Mercer also could have easily scored a TD at the end of the game and chose not to.

Early our biggest issues were turnovers and giving up big plays, and that makes sense with the new staff. These last 3 games (Furman, ETSU, and VMI) will tell us how far the team has come. I'd say most WCU fans are pretty happy with the progression and would be very happy if we could somehow win 1 or 2 more. I'd also say we are all extremely happy with our new coaches and the administration finally spending a little money (both getting rid of the old staff and hiring the new). I certainly expect the team to get better under Kerwin Bell, and this transition year has had growing pains but gives us hope it will be sooner rather than later.

[Flagman]

Just went back and watched the last 5 plus minutes. That was really disheartening to watch, the way we gave up. Over on AGS Mocs fan said utc peeps in the stands were shaking their heads and didn’t understsnd Hendrix not using the timeouts etc. Anyway, on to the mountains.

It wasn’t just the 100 utc peeps there. It was the FU peeps in the stands and the broadcast booth. Gonna be a cool day in the ‘whee.

Whose making the short 2 hour trip? Not many, I suspect. Have any of you who criticize more than encourage been to any of the away games this season?

[The Cats]

Just went back and watched the last 5 plus minutes. That was really disheartening to watch, the way we gave up. Over on AGS Mocs fan said utc peeps in the stands were shaking their heads and didn’t understsnd Hendrix not using the timeouts etc. Anyway, on to the mountains.

It wasn’t just the 100 utc peeps there. It was the FU peeps in the stands and the broadcast booth. Gonna be a cool day in the ‘whee.

Whose making the short 2 hour trip? Not many, I suspect. Have any of you who criticize more than encourage been to any of the away games this season?

We would certainly like to see a lot of Paladins in the stands on Saturday.
Come on up the mountain, enjoy the tailgating and the scenery, still some color in the trees. The band is outstanding again this year...

You're also welcome on our board for some friendly purple banter or just to say hello...

[gofurman]

Just went back and watched the last 5 plus minutes. That was really disheartening to watch, the way we gave up. Over on AGS Mocs fan said utc peeps in the stands were shaking their heads and didn’t understsnd Hendrix not using the timeouts etc. Anyway, on to the mountains.

It wasn’t just the 100 utc peeps there. It was the FU peeps in the stands and the broadcast booth. Gonna be a cool day in the ‘whee.

Whose making the short 2 hour trip? Not many, I suspect. Have any of you who criticize more than encourage been to any of the away games this season?

I don't criticize more than encourage.. but I do go to some away games.. the Whee is nice. Never been to VMI or Samford I admit. If I was to pick one it would be VMI - probably prettier I assume.?

goFurman !! Establish the run game this week - don't lose to a freakin' new coach and new team. Regardless, we have had a great D.. but let's make changes to the O at the end of year.

[FUBeAR]

Don’t let 95 fool y’all. He wore the proper shade of purple before he donned the more feminine version.

So, he was able to establish a base of developing & applying informed, reasonable logic (y’know…like FUBeAR) before he joined up with the vandalizing horde from the backwoods of the NC high country.

[wcugrad95]

True - I started out on scholarship at Furman as a QB (Jimmy Satterfield was the coach, Bobby Lamb was my position coach, Clay Hendrix was on staff and George Quarles was a GA). Got hurt during camp my FR season, but wasn't going to see the field anyway during Frankie Debusk's SR year. Came back to a position change to defense as a SO and decided to transfer - not through the portal (which of course didn't exist in 1991), just for school. Probably a mistake as Bobby Johnson was the DC and he requested they move me to Safety. But that is another story. I went to WCU expecting to probably transfer somewhere like UNC or NC State but absolutely loved Cullowhee. Professionally I have no regrets at all, personally sometimes I regret giving football up - until I have times when my knees, ankles, and back ache and that was after only playing 1 year and a Fall camp of college ball.

[wcugrad95]

And I missed the question about WCU injuries.

Rogan Wells was out for a couple of weeks, and our backup QB (Carlos Davis) threw for over 400 yards and was the SoCon offensive player of the week against Citadel. He also played relatively well against Mercer but had a couple of costly INTs. Wells was back against Wofford, and in a little over 2.5 quarters he earned SoCon offensive player of the week against them. Not sure if there has ever been 2 different guys from the same team at the same position earn back-to-back POW, but Wells seems to be fully recovered.

We are missing our starting TE, but we routinely rotated 2 or 3 guys there, anyway. By now, the "next men up" that have stepped in at various positions on the line have a lot of game experience so we are better in terms of health, depth, and understanding of the system. Our D has seemingly always been extremely young, but for the most part we are both healthier and more experienced on that side of the ball now.

There isn't a ton in here, but if you want to get some comments from Bell about the team here is his "Tuesday Take" weekly press conference.

https://catamountsports.com/news/2021/1 ... -bell.aspx

[FUBeAR]

Davis has a high ceiling - probably a good bit higher than Wells, but he is rough/raw - was kinda so raw that it’s been easy to see the improvement he has been making from game to game - Bell & Bell will get him Coached up & he will be tough to deal with in the SoCon for the next several years…IF he doesn’t get ‘portaled’ away to an FBS program that needs to plug in a mobile 6-3 225 lb QB that has had an FCS staff work out the kinks for them and provide live-fire experience for him that they can then leverage for their own benefit.

Wells was a perfect plug & play option for WCU this season, having been a Bell & Bell acolyte @ Valdosta AND Tusculum. That said…and 95 may not agree with FUBeAR’s assessment, but I think Wells struggled, more than expected, at adjusting his game to D1 level early on. Those tight D2 windows he was able to throw through became PD’s or INT’s at D1. Same for his running game. The ‘escapability’ he enjoyed at D2 wasn’t quite as he would anticipate (“I can run around this guy; he’s an LB. Whoa, he runs a 4.58, not a 4.85, as his D2 counterpart did.”) at D1.

Signs were evident that he was making that adjustment before his injury, but Wofford really isn’t a great test to see if that adjustment had carried over from his 2 or 3 weeks off due to injury and has advanced or regressed since. We’ll know this Saturday when he faces FU’s very good D. If he struggles early…a pick or 2 and/or more than a few ‘negative’ scrambles AND WCU stays in the game, FUBeAR would not be surprised to Coach(es) Bell have a pretty quick hook on Wells in favor of Davis. I know there is a lot of history & loyalty there with Wells, but if WCU has a chance to pull this upset, the WCU Coaching Staff would pimp out their Mama’s to make it so.

OK…jk about the Mama thang, but they will pull Wells and insert Davis the second they think the latter gives them a better chance for the win.

[The Jackal]

Defensively, go to work.

Offensively, lets see some identity.

With four games left, I'd like to see some of these freshmen get some reps. I'd love to see some of these young RBs and WRs get a shot. I think we have a few big TEs that I'd love to see get some reps.