Clash of the Claws

Bearcat vs. Panther.......6-1 vs. 2-4. Dynamic offense vs. the worst coached defense ever.

Welcome to our 3 hour farewell tour of the River City Rivalry trophy. I really don't care much about losing the trophy, it's pretty ugly. I'm more upset losing to a team that we should be well ahead of at this point in terms of team development. Anyways, here's our game 7 preview!

So Cincy brings in first year head coach Brian Kelly. No, not former SGB president Brian Kelly, but a Brian Kelly who knows how to coach. Cincy hired an up and coming coach who started to turn their team around, but was snatched up by MSU last season. Brian Kelly, another up and coming coach took over and the team has stayed right on track. Cincy hasn't had great recruiting classes, but has turned this team around by playing to its strengths. You know, something that good coaches do. Here's a surprise, Cincy helps create turnovers by PRESSURING THE QUARTERBACK! They do it with different blitz schemes too....... You know, as I write this, I'm thinking I may just start taping Cincy games for the rest of the season and make a defensive highlight package and send it down to the Southside complex to show some coaches how to play defense with or without talent. Enough of this rant, lets move on.

Cincy runs a very dangerous spread offense. If you think we'll be ok stopping their run, think again. Cincy has a mobile qb who can run the ball, and as a team, Cincy is averaging more yardage rushing per game than we are. The Bearcat's QB Ben Mauk is also a huge threat through the air playing in that spread offense. Their leading WR has 8 touchdowns, thats 1 less than Panther RB Lesean McCoy.

Cincy's defense is 2nd in NCAA in interceptions. Their defense always finds ways to cause turnovers, especially against inferior opponents. Cincy has a very good run defense which has only given up one 100 yard rushing performance this season. Hopefully saturday at 4 we make it 2. Last week Louisville exposed the Cincy defense picking apart the secondary. I think that Bostick can help open up this game with some short passes to start off with which should no only open the running game, but hopefully cause the DB's to press which would open up the deep vertical attack. Turner and Pestano must be on top of their game for us to have a slight chance. I'm just afraid that facing a good defense this week, the injury plagued, inferior offensive line will crumble and that may just seal our fate for this game.

My predictions for this week is that Bostick will have about 50 passing attempts only because we will fall behind early. Pat needs to get rid of the ball fast and dance in the pocket because he will not have much time back there. We need to watch out for turnovers. We will have at least 2 turnovers on interceptions, which will be due to pressure on the quarterback.

Our defense will prevent the Benton/Moore RB combo from joining the Paul Rhoads still running club. However, Paul "hit the" Rhoads will refuse to blitz and since our secondary plays a zone and most of the DB's have decided to refuse to play this season, Mauk is going to light us up. Maybe with Wanny up in the booth he will see how ridiculous our defense looks to the rest of us and will make a LONG OVER DUE CHANGE!

So look forward to some history being made this saturday. 1921 was the year the Jack Rabbit was introduced to Kennywood, it was the year my Great grandmother was born, and it was also the year we started our winning streak against Cincy. And after this weekend, we'll still be able to say we have the Jack Rabbit and Kennywood.

Cincy 45 - Pitt 28