FB: American Rivers Conference

[sportsknight]

Damn, looks like I wasted post #1000 on a duhawk.

Looking over some of the stats from the Wartburg-BV game, I'm beginning to notice a couple of trends that may be contributing to Wartburg's early-season losses.  I know that the Wartburg coaching staff preaches winning "sudden change" situations, and the Knights have at best been inconsistent to that end this season.  Turnovers are only as good as the points you can score off of them, and through the first five games of the season, Wartburg has scored 56 points off of the 15 turnovers they've forced.  That seems like a decent number, but when you take away the two blowout wins (St. Norbert and Cornell), the numbers drop to just 14 points off of 7 turnovers.  I think that was a big story on Saturday, when Wartburg had 4 takeaways against BV and turned one of them into a touchdown, but two of the other three resulted in a missed FG and fumbling it right back to the Beavers.

Also, of the 17 offensive touchdowns that the Knights have scored this year, 7 of them have been on plays of 30 yards or longer.  Now I'm all for a quick-strike offense, but doesn't that seem like a fairly high percentage?

[Thunderbolt]

Dutch gracious even in defeat

After losing to Wartburg - Sept. 20, 2008
Airborne Dutch - Congrats to the Knights ...
Klompen - Congratulations to Wartburg on a hard fought win.
DutchFan2004 - Congrats to the Knights on the win ...
dutchfan1 - Congrats to Wartburg on the victory.  You played well and hung in with us when you needed to ...
fannosaurus rex - What a game!  Congratulations to the Warts.  They made big plays ...

After losing to Luther - October 4, 2008
Klompen - Congratulations to today's winners, particularily Luther and BV.  Enjoy today's wins, you both deserve it ...
fannosaurus rex - Luther has a very good football team.  Congrats to them and thanks to whoever provided the video.

I would echo that thought. For not having much practice at it, the fans, players and staff are most gracious in defeat.
 I'm sure I wasn't alone stewing at half time that the missed extra points were going to come back and bite the Norse. I don't know what happened at half time that changed the game. It didn't appear like any scheme changes took place. The Dutch dominated the first half everywhere but on the score board. I'm left to believe it was just the momentem of the pick six right before half. Floyd touched on the other huge turn of events in the third quarter. After Brondyke put a fifty yard punt out of bounds on the Norse 3 yard line, the offense come up with two big plays to change field position. Then the defense made what amounted to three stops on the next posession, with the 4th down penalty and the fake punt for a first down. You could almost see it as the defense come off the field, that they had gone from thinking they could to believing they would.
 One of the Dutch fans posted earlier that the Norse were getting the young Dutch team at a good point in the schedule, I agree completely with that thought. They may or may not lose again this season but will have a lot to say about how the final standings look.

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Damn, looks like I wasted post #1000 on a duhawk.

Looking over some of the stats from the Wartburg-BV game, I'm beginning to notice a couple of trends that may be contributing to Wartburg's early-season losses.  I know that the Wartburg coaching staff preaches winning "sudden change" situations, and the Knights have at best been inconsistent to that end this season.  Turnovers are only as good as the points you can score off of them, and through the first five games of the season, Wartburg has scored 56 points off of the 15 turnovers they've forced.  That seems like a decent number, but when you take away the two blowout wins (St. Norbert and Cornell), the numbers drop to just 14 points off of 7 turnovers.  I think that was a big story on Saturday, when Wartburg had 4 takeaways against BV and turned one of them into a touchdown, but two of the other three resulted in a missed FG and fumbling it right back to the Beavers.

Also, of the 17 offensive touchdowns that the Knights have scored this year, 7 of them have been on plays of 30 yards or longer.  Now I'm all for a quick-strike offense, but doesn't that seem like a fairly high percentage?

The 1997 Iowa Football team had all of those long TD runs by Tavian Banks and long PR and KR plays by Tim Dwight, but they had a hard time generating a consistent offense that could grind the ball (especially after they had QB injuries) to eat clock and put away tight games.  A lack of consistent offense and poor field goal kicking led to a 7-5 season with lots of maddening close losses on the road (including blowing a 21-7 lead against National Champion Michigan).

It may sound crazy since Iowa has almost no explosive plays for TDs in 2008, but there does need to be some sort of happy medium where you have playmakers to stretch the defense and can hit a homerun, but also that you can just line up and grind the ball like many Knight teams over the last 15 years.  I prefer those offenses where the OL and run game eventually just wear out the opposing defense by the 2nd half.

I have only been to one Luther game so far this year, but I guess I have been lamenting the lack of offense and run game for Luther during much of the preseason and regular season.  I did not realize that the Norse are actually running the ball statistically better than the Knights to this point.  Yordi and the Knight passing game make the Wartburg Offense stronger than what the Norse have, but it just seems out of character for the Knight program.

[du-sz]

All I have to say about this weekend is   

Congrats to Luther and BV on their big wins this weekend. If you would have told me that those two teams would be sitting at the top of the conference right now before the season I would have thought you were crazy. Can this season get any more wacky? Hopefully Cornell can stir it up too with a win over Simpson for homecoming this weekend.

Sorry to sound like a petty complainer, but Loras seems a little passed off around here despite their early season performances.  BV and Luther are great stories as well and deserve plenty of kudos, but the Duhawks seem to be forgotten because of who they've played.  Someone mentioned that beating Coe and Cornell was nothing, but, based on this year's results, it seems to be about on par with beating Central and UD like Luther has done.

5-0 Monmouth is the only team to beat the Duhawks, and they had to come from behind to do it.  Sure, they shouldn't be crowned yet (far from it in fact), but it seems like the Pick 'em boards are going to be full of BV picks this week.  Is that a wrong assumption? Is it right, why so?

Sorry I don't consider a win over my winless rams as good as a win over a wartburg, central or even ud.    I think I gave Loras some kudos in one of my other posts right after that one. If I were you I would be more worried about taking care of BV this weekend. You guys win that game and you'll be sitting pretty good...of course wartburg and central will still be waiting..and ud.

Of course a victory over the winless Rams is nothing to write home about, but the fashion in which Loras did it is a little.  Sure we're worried about BV next week, the Battle for the Saddle should be a great one this year.  Wartburg and Central are still waiting on the schedule, but how can you be too afraid of teams that are a combined 5-4 (2-3).  These are great programs and I'm sure they will be in the running as the season progresses, but as of now they aren't looking so hot.

And duhawkdanran and steelhawk can be added to the Loras list of supporters.

[Floyd in Iowa City]

Dutch gracious even in defeat

After losing to Wartburg - Sept. 20, 2008
Airborne Dutch - Congrats to the Knights ...
Klompen - Congratulations to Wartburg on a hard fought win.
DutchFan2004 - Congrats to the Knights on the win ...
dutchfan1 - Congrats to Wartburg on the victory.  You played well and hung in with us when you needed to ...
fannosaurus rex - What a game!  Congratulations to the Warts.  They made big plays ...

After losing to Luther - October 4, 2008
Klompen - Congratulations to today's winners, particularily Luther and BV.  Enjoy today's wins, you both deserve it ...
fannosaurus rex - Luther has a very good football team.  Congrats to them and thanks to whoever provided the video.

I would echo that thought. For not having much practice at it, the fans, players and staff are most gracious in defeat.
 I'm sure I wasn't alone stewing at half time that the missed extra points were going to come back and bite the Norse. I don't know what happened at half time that changed the game. It didn't appear like any scheme changes took place. The Dutch dominated the first half everywhere but on the score board. I'm left to believe it was just the momentem of the pick six right before half. Floyd touched on the other huge turn of events in the third quarter. After Brondyke put a fifty yard punt out of bounds on the Norse 3 yard line, the offense come up with two big plays to change field position. Then the defense made what amounted to three stops on the next posession, with the 4th down penalty and the fake punt for a first down. You could almost see it as the defense come off the field, that they had gone from thinking they could to believing they would.
 One of the Dutch fans posted earlier that the Norse were getting the young Dutch team at a good point in the schedule, I agree completely with that thought. They may or may not lose again this season but will have a lot to say about how the final standings look.

Thunderbolt,

How much different did the offense look on Saturday versus the other three games?  I have seen Webb and the DL get after people in previous years so that was not new, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well the Norse blocked and how accurate Reynolds was with the football.  He also made good decisions, as I do not really remember any of those "boy he got away with one on that throw" deals.

Good to see Jesse Kent have a real nice game!

The DBs looked like they were having lots of fun in the 2nd half playing centerfield behind what the Norse were doing up front.

It looked like the long-range kicker from last year was playing, but is there any word on whether he will be able to resume kicking anytime this season?

Thanks!

[sportsknight]

Of course a victory over the winless Rams is nothing to write home about, but the fashion in which Loras did it is a little.  Sure we're worried about BV next week, the Battle for the Saddle should be a great one this year.  Wartburg and Central are still waiting on the schedule, but how can you be too afraid of teams that are a combined 5-4 (2-3).  These are great programs and I'm sure they will be in the running as the season progresses, but as of now they aren't looking so hot.

Yep, probably best to not worry about them at all.  Hell, I wouldn't even do any gameplanning for the Wartburg game.  Just use that week to get ready for UD.

[5 Words or Less]

Any updates on Heys Jr?

[5 Words or Less]

What's the Battle-for-the-Saddle?

[dutchfan1]

While lamenting the Central loss to Luther this morning with a Dutch co-worker, talk turned to what we fondly referred to as the "Good Old Days." (He played for Schipper.) He brought up a kicker for William Penn back in the day that had a prostetic leg. Rumor has it that the leg would fly off every now and then when he was kicking....

True or not, it made me chuckle. Do any of you IIAC veterans have more insight to this, or any other interesting IIAC follies? Did any of you guys get hit by the airborne prostethis? Story time! 

(Doolittle, this is a research project with your name on it!) 

[LCNorse]

Great weekend to be a Norse. The next 3 years are going to be fun to watch with Reynolds at qb, this kid is legit, every time I watch him he has gotten better. Talked to some of the players after the game and was very surprised to hear them say that they felt like the Dutch quit down the stretch. Don't see that happen to often. However, this dutch team reminds me a lot of the '04 team - lots of fresh and sophs on the field but we all know what happened the following 3 years after that season. One thing that I think is sometimes is over looked, in the 4 years I played at Luther we played Wartburg and Central within the first 4 weeks of the year, I think there is a lot to be said on playing your tough games at the start of the year. Look what is happening to the knights and dutch after a physically and mentally tough game so early on...just a thought. I would much rather play my tough games towards the end of the season.

[Thunderbolt]

Great weekend to be a Norse. The next 3 years are going to be fun to watch with Reynolds at qb, this kid is legit, every time I watch him he has gotten better. Talked to some of the players after the game and was very surprised to hear them say that they felt like the Dutch quit down the stretch. Don't see that happen to often. However, this dutch team reminds me a lot of the '04 team - lots of fresh and sophs on the field but we all know what happened the following 3 years after that season. One thing that I think is sometimes is over looked, in the 4 years I played at Luther we played Wartburg and Central within the first 4 weeks of the year, I think there is a lot to be said on playing your tough games at the start of the year. Look what is happening to the knights and dutch after a physically and mentally tough game so early on...just a thought. I would much rather play my tough games towards the end of the season.

I don't think the Dutch quit. Late in the game they were forced to be one dimentional, and the Norse were able to drop 7 and sometimes 8 in coverage and still get pressure on the QB. It's not easy to look good in that situation. I would say that a couple recievers that looked great in the first half, didn't seem to play with the same confidence late.
  A great point about scheduling. This young Dutch team was probably carring more pressure than we think, with all the streaks they were left in charge of. Now thats all behind them, it will be fun to watch how they respond knowing we don't have to play them again.

[Thunderbolt]

            Hi Floyd,

The offense continues to evolve with a new wrinkle every week. They still don't run many different plays. The passing game has been what you saw Saturday. This was his best game so far in reguards to accuracy. They have done a good job of play calling to help him protect the ball. Yes, Reynolds has done a great job of decision making all year.
  Aside from the St. Olaf game where the OLine didn't do much, they have been real good. I thought they were taking over the UD game in the second half before Bass got hurt. I think they played a lot better game against Simpson than the stats or score would indicate. OldNorse made a good observation during that game about Leigh in his first start. It seemed he was trying to hit the hole to fast as opposed to taking that split second to allow the line to create a gap for him and then hit it. He still had several 7 and 8 yard gains, but looked better this week. Especially impressive this week as they played without both starting guards.
Not sure what is going to happen with the kicking game. Barkley isn't getting the distance he was the first  two weeks for some reason. Grimm played a little at Simpson and more against Central. I know he doesn't think of himself as just a kicker, and doesn't want to be, but we might start seeing more of him one way or the other.

[warthog]

Hurray for the Wartburg women's golf team! 

Will get at least one conference championship this fall.

[TrainsEqualCrowdNoise]

Any updates on Heys Jr?

I haven't heard anything, and far from providing inside information, it appeared from the video that he got his ankle rolled.  When he was walking off the field it looked like he would be able to shake it off, obviously that wasn't the case.  He is a tough kid and you know he is going to do everything he can to be on the field this weekend, especially since its homecoming weekend.  Here is to hoping it isn't too serious and he is able to play and play well, as we'll need him.  Maybe it gives a little suspense to the Simpson staff with the uncertainty of whether or not he will play, but maybe that's just wishful thinking...

[du-sz]

What's the Battle-for-the-Saddle?

It goes back reporter Chuck Offenberger. After his days down in DM he got jobs at Loras and BV.  He's been a big supporter of both over the years.  He used to give his famous saddle shoes to the winning coach of the BV/Loras match-up each year.  He might even still do it, I'm not sure.