Ohio-Kent State Preview: OK, How about Undefeated In The MAC?

Even though the Ohio Bobcats will not go undefeated this season, they can still go undefeated - in MAC play. For some, that will be a bit of disappointment. For most, that will be just fine.

The Bobcats' first MAC opponent is Kent State. The Golden Flashes are currently 1-3 and they coming off their sole win of the season - a 33-25 win over the South Alabama Jaguars. Unfortunately a quick Google search was unable to tell me whether or not Bobcats and Jaguars are related. That said, I am 99.9% Golden Flashes are fictional beings that were created on a Harry Potter fan fiction forum.

Kent State hangs its proverbial hat on its defense but because they chose to schedule two good opponents in their first four weeks the numbers won't show that. Alabama scored 48 points against Kent State in week one and Kansas State hung 37 on them in week three. Without question the Golden Flashes' biggest accomplishment this season was being tied with for 4:38 before Alabama scored on them. Their second best accomplishment was scoring seven points against Alabama in 60 minutes.  Point being: relative to the MAC, their defense is good.

Relative to high school teams, their offense is OK.  They scored a season high 33 points against South Alabama but also scored 12 points in a loss to Louisiana-Lafayette. Junior QB Spencer Keith declined after his freshman season and it looks like he's going to decline after his sophomore season as well. He's only thrown for over 100 yards once this season in four games and he only has 388 yards and three touchdowns in total. Tyler Tettleton threw for 339 yards and three scores last week against Rutgers.

I'll give the Golden Flashes a bit of a break for playing Alabama and Kansas State (They aren't dominant or anything but they're a Big 12 team. Or are they? Did they get shifted to the Pac-whatever yet?), but still. When you play South Alabama you should accumulate some decent numbers. You can't average less than four yards per carry as a team AND have a poor passing offense.

I think that Ohio is going to be angry this week after having their dreams of a 12-0 season shattered last week. Tettleton and the Bobcats' offense may won't have it easy but I think Rutgers has a better defense than Kent State and they handled the Scarlet Knights pretty well with the exception of a few untimely turnovers (that they were due for, by the way, after forcing 29141 per quarter against Marshall). And I'm not sure there is a better cure for a putrid defense performance than playing Kent State. Nevermind, playing Akron would be like Jesus praying over a blind man. That said, SANU, Rutgers' star receiver that dominated Ohio last week, is averaging more yards and touchdowns per game than Kent State's entire receiving core. That's pretty neato.

Prediction: 31-10, Ohio.