Good points, Lucky Sparrow.

AJ seems to be fine. He seemed to have some kind of a cramp in his upper leg but walked it off on the sideline. At least that's the way it looked to me.

Nice meeting you Steve, and thanks for sharing your beverages. Also good to see some of the other BA-ers that haven't been around the boards as much these days. Good to catch up. Thanks to D.A. for hosting and letting us mooch on your food/drink.

UMass was a fun trip. They have probably have one of the better tailgate scenes in the MAC IMO(even though they're not currently MAC). Lot of people out there enjoying the not so great weather before the game. I think roughly 1/2 to 2/3 of the people tailgating went to the game.

The most interesting thing happened on the way to DA's tailgate. There were soooooo many students walking to the student tailgate that it was tough to get up the walking paths. (also learned UMass is quite the party school too) So many students, thousands, all heading to the student tailgate area. They had huge circus-like tents for them. I was told free food and they are apparently allowed to bring their own drinks of choice. A dual OU/UM grad told me that all these people really don't go to the game. The tailgate officially ended about 30 minutes before kickoff, and they had a loudspeaker that pleaded "This concludes the student tailgate, please stop by the stadium, the team really needs your support." We then watched those thousands of mostly drunken students march right back the way they came, and probably only a few hundred went to the game. Never seen anything like it.

McGuirk Stadium was under construction a few years ago, so they played at Gillette Stadium. Maybe it was because they were putting in artificial turf, but I'm not sure what else they could have done. The seating was standard bench stuff, and there were no restrooms at the stadium. You had to walk out of the stadium area to a different building if you had to go. There were no permanent concessions, just carts pulled in. There was a new-ish facility in one of the endzones, it doesn't match the rest of the stadium, so I'm guessing that could have been what was worked on.

The game itself was quite unexpected. Tons of points, and took forever. Chilly weather didn't help. UMass QB looked very good. Even though we won, it seemed like our defense seemed to be on the field for the vast majority of the game. And though we gave up 50 I somewhat felt like the D did well. Part of their big offensive stats came from being forced into playing offense on fourth downs so much.

Rourke is so fun to watch, always making something out of nothing. He's taking a lot of hits though. I wish we were in a position to play both he & Maxwell. I also thought the Bobcats were getting the short end of the stick on some of the calls, not sure if I'll be able to find a replay of the game or not to re-watch and confirm/disprove what I thought I saw in real time.

I'm hopeful Rourke & Zervos get some weekly MAC honors tomorrow. Two very clutch performances. Also a thumbs up to Cope.

Nice non-conference win over a historically strong UMass program to start the season for the Bobcats, even if it was low-scoring!

Playing without Tony and Jaaron for the first time, I thought we might struggle on our defensive rotations. But to give up only 50 points? IMPRESSIVE!

Of concern: We only made three 3-pointers. I thought that outside shooting would be a strength of this team.

Oh, well. On to the next one!

Well done sir.

For a second I thought I had stumbled into the basketball forum, and was reading about the first scrimmage of the basketball season. Theses things come earlier and earlier every year, much to my chagrin. Once, I figured out what you were doing, I was ROTFL! Very good, Brian!

 

PFF Week 5 - MAC Team of the Week - Offense pic.twitter.com/xpoMGg2qTK

— PFF College Football (@PFF_College) October 5, 2017