The unofficial online home for fans of the UAB Blazers. Part of Collegiate Sports Nation (CSN).

Woo! What a day. UAB got a much-needed redemption win over what is expected to be one of the better east teams. Club 125 was a clam bake. Two weeks in a row I came home in wet clothes. Last week, rain. Yesterday, sweat.

The BlazerTalk tailgate was a blast as always. Seriously, if you enjoy eating too much, laughing a lot and spending time with like-minded sports fans, it's the place to be.

Anywho, on to the observations.

Overturned laundry truck reported downtown

Yeah, we get called for a lot of penalties. I get it. Nobody likes them, and plenty of us have been pretty vocal on the subject, but bear with me here. I don't get as upset as some of you guys do over it. To wit, if you want an aggressive, attack defense that will get in a quarterback's grill and make him miserable, you're going to have some roughing the passer calls. If you want to play physical man-coverage because you trust your corners on an island, you're going to have some pass interference calls.

Rant about it all you want. I'm not going to.

That said, we've clearly got a reputation. It seemed as though on every FAU third down, the officials had a hand on their hankey at the snap.

Blazers. Spell it with a D

8 sacks
11 tackles for loss
Let's look at that a moment before we move on. That's 19 times FAU snapped the ball further away from our goal line than they did the play before. They had 75 offensive snaps. That is one quarter of their offensive snaps that they went backward. Wow. Our defensive line treated their O-line like an old dish rag.

4 forced turnovers. How'd we manage that? See above.

They finished with 52 rushing yards. Yeah, I know. Sacks count against it, but still.

Shut them out in the second half. This was a team that racked up 700 yards last week.

Speaking of depth, we had 24 different guys record at least one tackle. That's a lot.

DHop

He's quietly, without a lot of fuss or fanfare, become a pretty good QB. He's got a good live arm, decent set of wheels, and his decision-making seems to get better every week. It'll be interesting to see if he plays with a chip on his shoulder given his last Hattiesburg visit.

Cash and carry

Grayson Cash's coast to coast pick 6. Turning point in the game. FAU was on the doorstep of taking a lead, and generally feeling pretty good about things after tying it up. It was a potentially 14 point swing, and FAU never recovered. Speaking of...

To disagree with Yogi Berra, sometimes it's over before it's over

Anyone besides me think FAU just gave up in the 4th quarter? I realize Perry had thrown 3 picks, but I still thought he gave them a better chance than that other guy. They had us backed up deep in our own territory after that offensive interference flag with about 7 minutes to play and two timeouts. They let us eat up over 3 minutes without calling a timeout. The game ended and they still had those two timeouts. Weird.

Attendance

We're averaging 31K a game. Best in CUSA and better than several AAC teams. That's both our current peers and our aspirational ones. Stop navel-gazing about it. We're doing fine.

So, what does this mean, Barbara?

Well, we still hold our destiny in our hands. Undefeated and tied for first in the west. The UTSA game is shaping up to be a doozy, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. We've got Southern on the road in 6 days. The last time we were down there, Dylan Hopkins was making his first start, looked like a deer in the headlights, and we got our asses kicked. We've owed them a whoopin' for two years now. This week, we collect.

That's all I got. For now. I think.