From ESPN:

eribundi Boca Raton Bowl: UAB vs. Northern Illinois

(7 p.m. ET on ESPN at FAU Football Stadium in Boca Raton, Florida)

Two Group of 5 conference champions meet at the house Lane Kiffin built (well, not exactly). Both defenses are extremely talented, so expect a low-scoring game with highlights from star defenders such as UAB's Jamell Garcia-Williams and NIU's Sutton Smith. It's hard to go against the Blazers and coach Bill Clark, especially given NIU's bowl struggles under Rod Carey.

Prediction: UAB 26, Northern Illinois 13

UAB 26 points against NIU D? Wow.... I thought UAB O was nothing special? I think NIU will score enough on O, but it won't be over 21.

UAB 13
NIU 17

For the record - UAB's "nothing special" stats on offense were mostly put up with A.J. Erdley at QB. He's a big 6'4" who runs a lot and is hard to bring down, but has an erratic arm. He's pretty good with the deep ball, but lacks on touch passes, the bread and butter of padding your offensive stats. He got hurt at midseason and was replaced by Tyler Johnston, RS Freshman QB.

Johnston runs well and is three times better as a passer. He was 34-0 with two 5A championships in HS, as well as 5A Mr. Football his senior year. Never lost as a starter in HS.

In his first college start (admittedly against a hapless UTSA team) he had the highest QB rating in D1 for that day. So the stats are not really going to match what you see on the field.

Throw in Soph. RB Spencer Brown.

Freshman: 1329 rushing yards and 10 TD.
Soph: 1149 yards and 16 TD.

At heart this is pretty much an old school SEC type team. Stout defense, especially against the run. Run first offense with decent passing game. Eat up a lot of time with long drives. Use the kicking game to reverse the field.

<Shrug>. They play it on the field, not in the stat sheet.

A lot will depend on the health of our guys, especially along the OL. In our loss to Middle Tennessee in game twelve, we had about 20 guys out due to various injuries as well as a number of guys who got food poisoning. Add in that Coach Clark basically rested a lot of guys since we had already won our division to allow them time to heal before the championship. In that game we were running the 3rd string C, and two other OL were out, and one of our tackles got caught retaliating against a guy, punched him, and the refs, as usual caught the second guy. He got ejected, so we played that game with one starter on the OL.

I think they'll be back by the bowl, and they're 300 lbs all the way across.

Anyhow, stats can be kinda slippery.

I agree about stats. Really depends upon which team shows up for the game.

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