Not running a Liveblog tonight, because in part, I have no desire to try and ward off the CMU faithful but also because it’s the last home game and most Cards fans should actually be there. Need some motivation to get you ready? Fine. Roughly two hours….
For those that aren’t heading to Muncie or God forbid have to work, consider the comment section on this particular post to be your Liveblog of sorts. We’ll be stopping by early and often.
Drop your comments, poke fun at CMU, try to argue that Dan LeFevour is not in fact the greatest player of our generation. Anything you’d like, really.
Comment section. Go.
Filed under: Ball State, Gameday |
Over The Pylon 
Welcome to the comment section, boys and girls. Play nice now, and be extra kind to our Chippewa friends, won’t you?
And by extra nice I mean merciless ballbreakers. Chirp chirp, bitches.
CMU = Completely Mediocre University
OH! Nailed it!
Your wife owes money to Jackie Treehorn, LeFevour. That means you owe money to Jackie Treehorn.
Initial thoughts…
Great to see Crawdaddy doing the whole senior night thing.
Trent Dilfer may want to check his pants after that little lovefest with Danny Boy.
Stan seems quite happy and positive. An omen? We shall see.
Dilfer loving him some Eric Williams. Nice he’s right in line with OTP.
Uh oh, just heard “McHALE Lewis”
3 and out and a less than stellar punt. That could potentially be much more of an omen than Stan smiling on the sidelines.
Finally get some great pressure… WIDE open receiver… Ugh.
Perhaps the CMU offense will tire itself out and slow down, allowing BSU to come storming back. This is all part of the plan.
We finally run the double pass, and it TOTALLY fails…
Okay, CMU is totally gonna bite on some of these handoffs, they aren’t going for the fakes AT ALL.
Kudos to the BSU defense for creating the takeaway, though. Now the offense just needs to pick it up a bit. Good kick coverage on the punt as well.
Hey, only down 7-0 at the end of the 1st quarter (even though there’s a likely CMU score coming)… That’s somewhat encouraging… CMU has converted every third down though, and only defensive stop came off a fumbled handoff…
We’re end of 1, CMU-7, BSU-0. Chips threatening to punch it in.
Overall, I think the defense has looked great at times, awful at others, and the offense has looked virtually useless. We are getting zero pressure on LeFevour, and I’m not sure if we’re getting held or just aren’t that dominant up front.
More beer… stat.
No Ball State snuggie? F’ing ridiculous.
Wow. That was the goalline stand of all goalline stands!
Unbelievable. CMU fumbles on the 4th down and didn’t even make it to begin with. Remember in our earlier post when I said maybe, just maybe, with some breaks, we would be in position… that’s the sort of break I was talking about.
Okay. So that was awesome.
OK, so pretend you are Stan…what is the offensive strategy now?
AHAHAHAHA check out those BSU fans with paper bags on their heads
The offensive strategy for now should be somewhere between “stop sucking” and “score your balls off”.
Punting from our own end zone… to Antonio Brown. This doesn’t bode well.
ok, what strategy?
Good coverage on the punt proving me wrong. Nice job special teams. And congrats to CMU for a blatant block in the back that didn’t get called.
Do we let Tanner try to throw? It appears the run ain’t gonna work…
Cardinal, I’ll actually answer your question. I think the strategy that he has isn’t working, but I’m not sure it’s the wrong one in terms of the Wildcat, the conservative runs, etc. Unfortunately, with the personnel we have and their ability, our playbook is reduced and our strategical options considerably limited.
I say throw the playbook out and start chucking it deep.
The XBox playbook… I like where your head’s at.
I don’t know about anyone else, but Corey Sykes could damn near be the fastest player I’ve seen. Like… Florida fast.
Holy shit… I never thought I would ever hear an announcer pronounce Briggs Orsbon correctly the first time he had to call it out.
Do not agree with this call at all to go for the 3.
Somebody buy Trent Dilfer some beers tonight…then try and swipe his super bowl ring.
You’re right. Should have gone for 7 there against this high-powered CMU offense. But alas, Stan Parrish is not Bill Belicheck.
I would have put it in Williams hands to on 3rd… He has a knack for making something out of nothing… Then evaluate… From three yards out though, I agree with the three. Get a few points on the board, not picking up the TD would have killed all the confidence gained on that drive (when CMU looked pretty average).
Agreed. The 3rd down call was not good, and thus forced our hand on 4th.
I don’t know what Davyd Jones had for lunch today but he should eat it every meal from this point going forward.
Great throw, greater block. I had no idea you could request a dry ball. That’s a new one.
Off-topic sort of, for this being Trent Dilfer’s first game doing color commentary, he’s already 10 times better than Ray Bentley
Being “better than Bentley” is really no big accomplishment. For example, I am slow as shit and out of shape. Yet, I am still faster than Charlie Weis. That doesn’t make me an athlete.
But I agree that for game #1, Dilfer is doing a good job.
And with that… halftime.
21-3, Central Michigan. On pace for 42-6, which is still considerably better than most CMU fans were predicting and hoping for.
There are certainly some positives entering the half.
1) The defense has been porous at times, but doing a pretty admirable job considering how long they’ve been on the field. Keeping CMU from scoring on that 19 play drive is one of the better defensive performances I’ve seen out of a Cardinal team in the past four or five years. On a related note, this is the badass Davyd Jones from last season. Playing great tonight. The coverage has been pretty hit-and-miss (as expected).
2) The offense hasn’t been very good, and the situation has affected that. Hard to get the O going from the 1 or with 46 seconds left. Or when in a torrential rain (ask Nate Davis). However, with the exception of the first couple drives, the running game has looked solid. I hate to say it considering his worth to the program, but I’d like to see a few more carries for EW and Sykes over MiQuale. It seems that MiQuale’s effectiveness is dependent on getting other options going as well, at least in his biggest games this season. Especially when we’re throwing the different options off the wildcat (hate that name).
3) In short, we have a lot to work on (clearly), but I don’t think the score is totally indicative of the way BSU played for the first half. Of course, I’m also biased. Incredibly biased, when it comes to Ball State.
An explanation of the above post… I totally expect a loss (and have since last season, realizing how much we were losing talent-wise). I want to see some progress or something to build on. This game could be much, much worse… and for whatever reason, I take solace on at least that fact.
Cory Sykes looks like Garrett Wolfe’s little bro
Sykes is an impessive little back. Despite the drama and ridiculousness of this season, next season looks to be much much better. The talent is there, and the experience is growing.
I can’t say I’m surprised with that little turn of events with the fumble and then the subsequent CMU TD. That seems to be the way things are going this season… just awful fluke luck and craptacular bounces.
Trent Dilfer has made this game watchable. He has a huge future in this line of work.
Ball State is the hard-luck team of the MAC this season.
I think Walter sums this game up nicely….