My guess is they're correct. You guys lost some serious talent from last year's team, a "rebuilding" year was expected by most people out there.

Very difficult early schedule. At Fresno, and at NC State who beat Pitt at Pitt last year. Then Oklahoma at PBS.
There are some glaring problems though, but hopefully we improve and play better. Due to the difficult scheduling
it might be tough for UC to make a bowl game this year. The remaining 9 games, 6 are home games.

(09-18-2010 09:40 AM)CD11 Wrote:  I've heard from Cent. Michigan fans on message boards, friends in MAC schools who follow the league, and others for over a year now that Butch Jones is known for starting slow but getting on a roll. Looking back at his years at CMU, that does appear to be the case.

My only concerns is that his slow early season start transitioning to a better late season at CMU may be more indicative of schedule (early season OOC versus later season in conference MAC schedule) than a team improving. It might also be a combination of both (team gets better and schedule gets weaker). In either case, UC won't have an easy conference schedule following their tough OOC schedule unlike CMU. It will be interesting to see what the Bearcats do in conference play.

(09-18-2010 10:32 AM)brista21 Wrote:  My guess is they're correct. You guys lost some serious talent from last year's team, a "rebuilding" year was expected by most people out there.

Actually, nothing of the magnitude we're seeing was predicted. Just about every prognostication had us in the top 4. Right now, we'd be lucky to crack the top 4 in the BE.

The offensive line can't block, that makes it tough to do stuff, and such. The defence actually looks better than what we fielded last year. Let us blame the new coach...?

(09-16-2010 08:43 PM)CD11 Wrote:  

(09-16-2010 08:40 PM)Wilkie01 Wrote:   Why did you read it?

Wilkie, you're awesome. Can you please be our football coach?

I would not waste my time in the minors.

(09-18-2010 10:57 AM)UofL07 Wrote:  

(09-18-2010 09:40 AM)CD11 Wrote:  I've heard from Cent. Michigan fans on message boards, friends in MAC schools who follow the league, and others for over a year now that Butch Jones is known for starting slow but getting on a roll. Looking back at his years at CMU, that does appear to be the case.

My only concerns is that his slow early season start transitioning to a better late season at CMU may be more indicative of schedule (early season OOC versus later season in conference MAC schedule) than a team improving. It might also be a combination of both (team gets better and schedule gets weaker). In either case, UC won't have an easy conference schedule following their tough OOC schedule unlike CMU. It will be interesting to see what the Bearcats do in conference play.

That's a good point, although the schedule sets up a little nicely after OU with ample opportunity to get things clicking. We have a bye, then Miami OH, then at UL, then USF at home, then Syracuse at home. No disrespect to those teams at all, since they're all better than ours right now, but I like having a few non-worldbeater teams to play after a likely 1-3 start to get guys some confidence going into tough games against the conference heavyweights.