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Week 3: Sac State vs Northern Colorado

SDHornet

SDHornet

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Week 3: Sac State vs Northern Colorado

The Hornets (1-1) welcome the Northern Colorado Bears (0-2) to Hornet Stadium this Saturday. Hornet fans should be upbeat give then way the Hornets pay played the first 2 weeks as things are looking positive. Meanwhile, UNC was competitive at SJSU in a 35-18 loss, and held their own for the first half at Wazzou in what devolved into a 59-17 beatdown.

Offensively the Bears return Jacob Knipp (34/59, 305 yds, 1 TD, 2 INT) to run their spread offense. RB Milo Hall (51 car, 190 yds, 1 TD) had an impressive 1st half at WSU last week and has proven to be a slippery runner. WR Willie Fairman (12 cat, 73 yds) has been the top target for Knipp so far. The Bears OL has plenty of size and did a good job of opening holes for Hall in the first half at Wazzou. Wazzou had to bring an extra guy in the box to slow down the Bears run game early on and they struggled to pick up the blitz (5 sacks allowed thru 2 games).

Defensively the Bears run a 3-4 and dropped back 8 a lot of the time to counter WSU’s air raid offense. The Bears' defense has struggled but they have played up the first 2 weeks. FS Jerone Jackson (17 tak) leads the defense in tackling but 5 others have at least 8 tackles.

UNC has a solid kicker in Collin Root (4/4 FG, 2 of 50+ yds) who has plenty of leg.

UNC will be playing its 3rd straight road game of the season but this will be their first game against a non-FBS program. The Hornets need to take care of business and win this game comfortably.

Stingers Up!
 
Yep. This week's match up is exactly the type of game the Hornets need to start winning. UNC may be a pretty good team, but the Hornets are at home and need to take care of business.
 
This needs to be a double digit win for the Hornets. No.Co should one of the easier Division 1 games on the Hornets' schedule this year, and if the defense is really for real, then we should be able to stop their offense without any real problems. Kevin Thomson needs to improve from his play from last week I feel, if he had made a feel correct read, we would probably have left ASU with more than just nice check. I'm fully confident he'll be able to bounce back since he's an upperclassmen. And it's hard to believe that QB guru Troy Taylor is going to let him make the same mistakes back-to-back weeks.
 
We can't take ANYONE for granted, but this one IS going to be pretty easy, particularly if those back-to-back FBS games nicked UNC up any. I'm glad to hear that Thomson's OK.

Hornets 63, Bears 0
 
Super Hornet said:
Hornets 63, Bears 0
Click to expand...

I dont believe we have ever blown them out, it has always been a very close game. UNC has a way of passing their way out of things. Lets hope their QB is having an off day.
 
We were at the game. I’m lovin the new Hornets and that defense is just flat tough. There was quite a bit of buzz about how close we played ASU and how ASU beat a ranked FBS team.

The offense looked a bit out of sync, Thompson missed a lot of throws, either overthrew the receivers or the route / receiver were off. The offense is still very high power.

BSCFan your son looked good, getting the ball up and good distance.

Great win for this team, should be a great season. Definitely exciting to watch!
 
HornetHope said:
BSCFan your son looked good, getting the ball up and good distance.
Click to expand...

Thank you! We watched at home on Pluto TV (without any glitches!) and missed seeing 2 of his PAT attempts due to them showing touchdown replays. We saw him run off the field and they said the kick was good, so we knew. He was bummed about missing the 32 yard FG attempt but I told him not to sweat it too much as that's something he couldn't totally control. (The laces were facing him when he kicked the ball and that can screw up the flight of the ball...they'll need to work on that)

 
HornetHope said:
We were at the game. I’m lovin the new Hornets and that defense is just flat tough. There was quite a bit of buzz about how close we played ASU and how ASU beat a ranked FBS team.

The offense looked a bit out of sync, Thompson missed a lot of throws, either overthrew the receivers or the route / receiver were off. The offense is still very high power.

BSCFan your son looked good, getting the ball up and good distance.

Great win for this team, should be a great season. Definitely exciting to watch!
Click to expand...

Agree with you about the defense. To me, that’s been the biggest improvement and biggest surprise of the season thus far.

I mean, the Hornets held ASU to the same 3 point total through a half and only 9 points more in total than Michigan State did today — who supposedly boasts one of the better defenses in college football.

Today’s shutout kinda confirms that Sac State’s defense is pretty darn good compared to years past. They look fast to me and there’s usually 3-5 defenders swarming to the ball. It’s been fun to watch.

I realize that UNC isn’t supposed to be a very good team, but San Jose State only beat them by 18 and Washington State beat them by a lesser margin than the Hornets just did.

So I believe it was still an impressive win. A game in which their offense struggled early on.
 
Computers have us at #34 of 126 FCS teams after the UNC beatdown!

https://www.masseyratings.com/cf/compare1aa.htm
 
BSCfan said:
HornetHope said:
BSCFan your son looked good, getting the ball up and good distance.
Click to expand...

Thank you! We watched at home on Pluto TV (without any glitches!) and missed seeing 2 of his PAT attempts due to them showing touchdown replays. We saw him run off the field and they said the kick was good, so we knew. He was bummed about missing the 32 yard FG attempt but I told him not to sweat it too much as that's something he couldn't totally control. (The laces were facing him when he kicked the ball and that can screw up the flight of the ball...they'll need to work on that)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/11U3JjiNyXC2WvPTE_iCbhrs6wtW3cl_I/view?usp=drivesdk
Click to expand...

He was not the only one, they missed one earlier too. It is hard to tell from the stands but it looked like the holder was having a hard time getting the handle on the ball, not getting laces out would clearly make a difference. They will get it cleaned up in next couple weeks I am sure.
 
Besides the kicking difficulties - the only other blemishes: Dotson injury and 6,752 in attendance...
 
Kadeezy said:
Besides the kicking difficulties - the only other blemishes: Dotson injury and 6,752 in attendance...
Click to expand...

Yeah I noticed he was limping on the sidelines in the 2nd half. No brace, no ice, no crutches. I'm hoping he just got dinged and the coaches were keeping him out.

Attendance last night was embarrassing.
 
Hornets win big, 50-0 over hapless UNC. First shutout since a 2011 14-0 win at UNC in that rainstorm, and first shutout at home in 25 years.

Stellar performance by the defense. The Hornets held UNC to 171 total yard of offense, 3/15 on 3rd down, and force 2 turnovers. That huge hit by Marcus Bruce on Jacob Knipp was just criminal. The way this defense has played this far in the season has to be the biggest surprise so far.

Offense got at it early but faltered in the redzone in the first half. I agree with HornetHope in that they looked out of sync. They came out with a purpose in the 2nd half and finished this game off early on. 50 points and over 600 yards of offense sure is fun to watch.

Kicking game needs to tighten things up a bit. Need to nail those short yardage FGs. The blocked PAT didn't help matters either.

On to Fresno...
 
Kadeezy said:
Computers have us at #34 of 126 FCS teams after the UNC beatdown!

https://www.masseyratings.com/cf/compare1aa.htm
Click to expand...

I've never been a fan of Massey Ratings. They're not a good judge of character, yet a few women's semi-pro football leagues still use them for determining playoff seedings. I hope they're not a factor in the NCAA Playoff Committee deliberations....

That said, after LAST week, we were getting votes in the STATS poll....
 
Super Hornet said:
Kadeezy said:
Computers have us at #34 of 126 FCS teams after the UNC beatdown!

https://www.masseyratings.com/cf/compare1aa.htm
Click to expand...

I've never been a fan of Massey Ratings. They're not a good judge of character, yet a few women's semi-pro football leagues still use them for determining playoff seedings. I hope they're not a factor in the NCAA Playoff Committee deliberations....

That said, after LAST week, we were getting votes in the STATS poll....
Click to expand...

One of the writers for HERO sports tweeted out tonight his poll. His rationale was given how we played vs ASU and ASU vs. MSU along with the UNC blowout, he put us in at 25. It is early, but defensively we look really good.
 
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