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BoiseStateFan27
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Tomorrow night is the Cactus bowl ladies and gents!
Now I'll be honest when I say I don't know much about this bowl game, but I would assume the trophy we are playing for looks something like this....
Some exciting stuff here.
Our opponent we are playing is the Baylor Bears, their story is well known with controversy coach firing en sech. Despite this they started the year 6-0, they beat Oklahoma State in the process somehow but the rest of the opponents were mostly bad. They lost a thrilling battle with Texas which at the time seemed like it would definitely be the game that saved Charlie Strong's job, as it turned out it did not, why? Well the following week Baylor promptly saw the bottom fall out in a complete and utter collapse in a 62-22 loss to TCU, they kept the strings of blowouts coming in losses to Oklahoma, Kansas State and Texas Tech. They did end the year by keeping it close against West Virginia in a 3 point loss but for the most part the sky is falling for Baylor. Their offense which is normally wide open and so smooth hitting loads of big plays wasn't as strong this year. Prior to Seth Russell's injury it just didn't seem like the same offense and after he got hurt the offense regressed even further. The star of their team is Wide Receiver KD Cannon, who personally guaranteed that Baylor would win this game. Now if this was the Boise State of old that would mean that he would be held without a single catch until the game is out of hand then get a 12 yard catch in the 4th quarter and promptly mouth off to the closest player...but this hasn't been the Boise State of old so we will see what happens here. Their defense has been quite horrendous at times, and they give up a lot of yards, where they are dangerous is when they do a good job playing bend but don't break offense and forcing mistakes in the redzone.
So what does this all mean for us? Perhaps the biggest positive is that Harsin has perhaps had some of his best coaching performances in bowl games. In his first year we impressively beat an Arizona team in the Fiesta bowl that no one thought we would beat, then last year we beat Northern Illinois in a thorough thrashing so bad that perhaps Northern Illinois still hasn't recovered from that absolute woodshed beating. The bad news is our offense has been incredibly mistake prone this year and for whatever reason it just has been incredibly off at times especially in the passing game. We've played against crap defenses before and failed to do anything against them (Air Force.) Baylor's bend but don't break style will be tough for us, but on the other side Baylor's offense is very reliant on big plays and one thing our defense has absolutely refused to do this year is give up the big play. Usually we will let opposing offenses cross midfield and getting any further beyond that has proven to be a challenge for the opposing team.
There's no telling how this game will go, we have the edge in coaching for this one due to Harsin's previous bowl performances and a lot of Baylor's staff is set to coach elsewhere next year and really don't have much reason to bring out anything new for this game. The big question as it's been all year is can we avoid shooting ourselves in the foot? If we can avoid the mistakes this bowl of Cactuses should be ours.
Now I'll be honest when I say I don't know much about this bowl game, but I would assume the trophy we are playing for looks something like this....
Some exciting stuff here.
Our opponent we are playing is the Baylor Bears, their story is well known with controversy coach firing en sech. Despite this they started the year 6-0, they beat Oklahoma State in the process somehow but the rest of the opponents were mostly bad. They lost a thrilling battle with Texas which at the time seemed like it would definitely be the game that saved Charlie Strong's job, as it turned out it did not, why? Well the following week Baylor promptly saw the bottom fall out in a complete and utter collapse in a 62-22 loss to TCU, they kept the strings of blowouts coming in losses to Oklahoma, Kansas State and Texas Tech. They did end the year by keeping it close against West Virginia in a 3 point loss but for the most part the sky is falling for Baylor. Their offense which is normally wide open and so smooth hitting loads of big plays wasn't as strong this year. Prior to Seth Russell's injury it just didn't seem like the same offense and after he got hurt the offense regressed even further. The star of their team is Wide Receiver KD Cannon, who personally guaranteed that Baylor would win this game. Now if this was the Boise State of old that would mean that he would be held without a single catch until the game is out of hand then get a 12 yard catch in the 4th quarter and promptly mouth off to the closest player...but this hasn't been the Boise State of old so we will see what happens here. Their defense has been quite horrendous at times, and they give up a lot of yards, where they are dangerous is when they do a good job playing bend but don't break offense and forcing mistakes in the redzone.
So what does this all mean for us? Perhaps the biggest positive is that Harsin has perhaps had some of his best coaching performances in bowl games. In his first year we impressively beat an Arizona team in the Fiesta bowl that no one thought we would beat, then last year we beat Northern Illinois in a thorough thrashing so bad that perhaps Northern Illinois still hasn't recovered from that absolute woodshed beating. The bad news is our offense has been incredibly mistake prone this year and for whatever reason it just has been incredibly off at times especially in the passing game. We've played against crap defenses before and failed to do anything against them (Air Force.) Baylor's bend but don't break style will be tough for us, but on the other side Baylor's offense is very reliant on big plays and one thing our defense has absolutely refused to do this year is give up the big play. Usually we will let opposing offenses cross midfield and getting any further beyond that has proven to be a challenge for the opposing team.
There's no telling how this game will go, we have the edge in coaching for this one due to Harsin's previous bowl performances and a lot of Baylor's staff is set to coach elsewhere next year and really don't have much reason to bring out anything new for this game. The big question as it's been all year is can we avoid shooting ourselves in the foot? If we can avoid the mistakes this bowl of Cactuses should be ours.
