A quiet week on the fringe, especially since a lot of the non-BCS bowls have given way to the bigger leagues this week. We have had a few more surprises this week, which sets up a very interesting run through the rest of Bowl Season
Marshall 21, Ohio 17- this, to me, is a big surprise and is not the outcome that the MAC (or Ohio, of course) wanted- 6-6 Marshall came in and jumped out early, and while the offense faded in the second half, Ohio couldn’t muster quite enough points to catch the Herd. Still a good year for Ohio, but they’ll be looking to finish better in 2010.
We have no non-BCS bowl games today, but a couple good ones to look forward to this week:
Eaglebank- UCLA vs. Temple- These two teams have never met. In fact, Temple has only been to two other bowl games- one in 1939 and their last trip was in 1979, where they also played a team from out west- California. Meanwhile, UCLA is back in the postseason after a year away, but has lost their last two bowl games and hasn’t picked up a postseason win since 2005.
24 may be the magic number in this game- all of UCLA’s 6 losses came when they allowed 24 or more points, while they held beaten teams to 23 or less. UCLA’s offense only scored more than 23 three times this year, against San Diego State, Washington State, and in a loss to Cal (who scored 45). On the other side, Temple only went under 23 twice all season, both in losses. Temple’s defense is good but not great, so a 30-20 type game is their best recipe for success on Tuesday.
Humanitarian Bowl, Bowling Green vs. Idaho- Wednesday’s game will be the first meeting between these two teams as well. This is Idaho’s second bowl appearance all time and second in the Humanitarian, which they won in 1998. BGSU is 4-3 all time in bowl games, having most recently lost to Tulsa in the 2007 GMAC Bowl. This will be their 4th bowl game of the 2000s.
This one should come down to Idaho finding a way to improve it’s shaky pass defense, but this bowl season has gone nothing like we expected so far, so who knows. Bowling Green brings in the #8 passing offense while Idaho is #11 in the same category, so if the weather is good, this one should be a shootout. The difference is found in the passing defense- Idaho’s is in the bottom 10 nationally, while Bowling Green is a top 50 team. A glance at the weather shows about 29 degrees at kickoff with a chance of snow, so we’ll see how the cold temps affect the offenses in this one- dealing with conditions could be the deciding factor in this game.
Thursday too will feature a couple more non-BCS games, but we’ll try to cover those later this week. In the meantime, enjoy the football and hopefully a quiet week between holidays.