What a weekend it was for Bronco nation. The football team beat a decent Bowling Green squad, the hockey team started their season with a beat-down of Alabama-Huntsville, shoot, even the volleyball team got in on the winning in their match vs BG. While I cannot provide any commentary on the volleyball match, I can look at the football and hockey games and break them down.
Lets first start at football. Oh..........my...........goodness. I have seen something that I hadn't seen in a while. Yep, it was the WMU run game. It wasn't even a nice "oh, lets put up 200 yards" game. Try 351 yards. I know the BG run defense wasn't that good, but the WMU run offense was horrible the past few weeks. Now some of this can be accredited to the fact that Western had a nice lead the entire 2nd half. But those yards are on 47 carries. That's 7.5 yards/rush. That's not "running the clock out" numbers, it's something more.
Alex Carder had another day in the office. 18/26 with 212 yards (just 212?) and 3 TDs. He did throw his usual "crap pick" on a throw to Jordan White (jeez, its always this combo that leads to it), but eh, didn't need it. After a career day last week, he used his legs more than his arm to help win.
Jordan White had 12 catches for 156 yards and 2 TDs. Another day in the office. Chris Prom had a TD catch too. LB TDs are always fun.
The defense played decently too, holding the Falcon offense to 381 yards total offense in a game where, I thought, that should've been the passing numbers. The only turnover they forced was an INT late in the game from the back-up QB, so the stalled drives really showed good stuff going ahead.
One thing that does worry me though. Late in the game, Alex Carder threw his last TD pass to White. As he came off the field, he asked to see the trainers. Why? He had a tennis ball size lump on his left arm. I don't know what it was, but he should be ready to go next week.
Now for hockey, and boy did the Broncos start their season with a bang.
The Broncos opened on Friday night to the tune of a 7-1 win. That's right, 7. They scored only 33 seconds into the game. Talk about starting fast. 4 first period goals pretty much put the Chargers away, who didn't get a shot the entire 3rd period.
Last night the Broncos continued their dominance with a 4-0 victory. Plenty of shots on goal for the Broncos, but only 4 goals to show for it.
Over the two nights, the Broncos used 2 different goaltenders: Nick Pisellini (11 saves on 12 shots) and Frank Slubowski (10 saves on 10 shots). It should be interesting how the goalie situation works out going forward, as WMU jumps from lowly UAH, to Union next weekend. Union was a 2-seed in the NCAA tournament last year, and were swept by the Broncos at Lawson last year in the regular season.
The offense looked good, the defense even better. Conditioning seemed fine too, but all of this is tough to gage over a team like UAH. These next few weeks should help shed some light on the Bronco's season.
Now onto other MAC Hockey News:
- #1/#2 Miami dropped a stunner to Bemidji State in Friday's game, 3-5. Cody Reichard took the loss, giving up 4 goals on 23 shots (the last goal was an empty-netter), 3 of the goals coming in the 3rd period.. They rebounded Saturday, winning 3-2. They came from behind after Connor Knapp allowed two 2nd period goals, but won on a short-handed goal from Matt Tomassoni, his 2nd goal of the game.
- Let's not forget Bowling Green. The Falcons opened their season with a 2-1 win over the Connecticut Huskies. Andrew Hammond made 20 saves, and the Falcons really put the puck on net. 39 shots. Yeah, that's a lot. Just have to find the back of the net more now. In their Saturday game, they did just that (4 goals on 45 shots). But Hammond had an awful game. Just 11 saves on 15 shots. The game went down as a 4-4 tie, the first tie/OT game from our MAC teams, and BG lost the shoot-out 1-0 in 4 rounds.