Boiler up Big Ten bottom-feeders - Gophers @ Boilermakers Preview

When we last left Ross-Ade Stadium, we shut the Boilers down
-photo by JT

Little to no time for a full detail game preview this week.  Out in the field for work, and then evenings of Halo: Reach are dominating my kid-free late nights.  I won't go with out a few brief words though about our upcoming game against Purdue.

Based on press clippings and cliched interview answers from the Gopher players, this team isn't packing it it quite yet.  And I actually believe them.  But can they win this game?

The short answer is 'yes'.  Purdue has been decimated by injuries, losing QB Robert Marve, RB Ralph Bolden, and WRs Keith Smith and Justin Siller (remember when he was a briefly a QB?) for the year.  They are officially wiped out at the skill positions, and that means that the hapless Gopher defense might just have a chance to slow somebody down.  Limiting running QB Rob Henry and halfback Dan Dierking's yards on the ground is the no-brainer key. That happens and a Gopher win is eminent. 

Purdue's defense has some strong performers, but as a unit aren't overwhelmingly good.  They did play a very solid game against Northwestern, limiting them to just 17 points.  Senior DE Ryan Kerrigan is a beast and will be the biggest challenge for the line to stop.  If he can pressure Weber early and often, and generate turnovers, then the Gophers will be in trouble.  OC Jeff Horton knows this though, and will probably dial up lots of inside runs all game, really testing the heart of the Purdue defense, rather than exposing Weber to 5 step drops and the shotgun early.  The O-line has done a nice job limiting sacks this year, so let's hope their improved play continues.  Lots of running mixed in with play action and screens.  Look for the Boilers to have our effective TE screen snuffed out this week, as I'm sure that will be a play they watch on film closely from the Wisconsin game.

Prediction:  Gopher pull the minor upset, grabbing the late lead in the 4th quarter.

Minnesota 27, Purdue 21

Gopher Player of the Game:  MarQueis Gray, 125 yards receiving and 1 TD
Boilermaker Player of the Game:  Dan Dierking, 95 yards rushing and 2 TDs

Gophs @ Boilers - While the Paint Crew is Away, can the Gophers play?

With the Gophers, headed down to West Lafayette, real Big Ten play starts tonight at Mackey Arena. With all due respect to the Nittany Lions and Hawkeyes, you are marginal Big Ten foes this year. Our beloved Gophers are expected to beat you this year. That's just how it is. Not so with the Boilermakers though. Purdue is clearly the best team Minnesota has faced to date this season.

Purdue is undefeated, and the well-deserved #4 ranked team in the country (and possibly higher after this week given UNC's loss to CoC), and has taken down some top tier competition already this year, taking down Bruce Pearl's Volunteers on the road, and handling Bob Huggin's Mountaineers just recently at home (Purdue's last game). They also have a few common opponents with the Gophers in South Dakota State, St. Joes, and Iowa. Iowa gave the Boilers a bit of a first half scare last week, but the Hawkeyes went back to what they know (sucking) in the 2nd half. Still, despite being a B-10 road game, Purdue didn't utterly dominate the game as expected. Some speculated that the Boilers were looking ahead to their matchup with unbeaten West Virginia. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, now that Purdue is officially a game into the B-10 schedule, they likely won't overlook the Gophers, even with a road trip to Wisconsin looming on Saturday.

The Gophers, unlike Purdue, haven't faced a hostile crowd all year - the closest thing coming during the B-10/ACC challenge in front of 5,000+ U of Miami fans. And Iowa on the road last Saturday was like a visit to the city morgue. Tonight will be a markedly different environment for the Gophs to play in. Purdue's student body is still on break, and we can only hope the bulk of those 'Paint Crew' kids will opt not to come back to campus for this game. (Note that Gopher Bandanna Guy did not abandon his Gophers over the winter break when he was a student, even driving a total of 10+ hours to illegally park for 2 hours in Minneapolis and watch Clem and friends take down the Sam Okey-led badgers in 1997 - oh wait, that season never happened, I forgot...).

With the potential of a partial Paint Crew tonight, can the Gophs get it done? I don't feel real good about this game, now that it is almost certain that Ralph the 3rd is out tonight. But perhaps going small and up tempo is the key here, as Myron Medcalf suggests. I agree with Myron that we won't beat the likes of Purdue or Michigan State with our halfcourt sets. Hell, we couldn't even beat Portland State that way. So I also say let's roll the dice and go up-tempo. Generate turnovers and push the ball up court.

Colton will have the starting matchup with center JaJuan Johnson, and while I like Colt 45, he's just not quick or skilled enough to slow him down. If that matchup gets exploited early (most likely in the form of 3 early Iverson fouls), then let's swing DJ off Hummel, and put him down on the blocks with JaJuan, and hope that his wingspan can make up for the 3" height differential. Then spread the floor and start running! Utilize our depth and try to wear them down in a running match.

Still, Purdue has such good frontline talent that this strategy could blowup in our faces by giving the Boilers lots of early and easy looks at the hoop. The last thing we want is Robbie Hummel getting warmed up with some uncontested jumpers offered up by an over aggressive trapping defense. No doubt head coach Matt Painter has looked long and hard at the Iowa game tape, and will be ready for us. Given this, I don't feel comfortable calling for the upset, signature win of the season.

Prediction: Purdue 74, Minnesota 67
Gopher Player of the Game - Lawrence Westbrook, 18 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists
Boiler Player of the Game - JaJuan Johnson, 22 points, 11 rebounds, 3 blocks

And hey, anybody else think the Purdue Pete pic at the top of this post looks just a bit like Gene Keady with scowl (AKA Keady's normal expression)? And who brandishes a hammer while playing hoops? As if the hardhat, giant black 'P' and the gold uni didn't tell us this was the Boilermakers, he needs a hammer too?

Go Gophs!

Boilers at Gophers Post Game - What we learned

The first ever Homecoming at the Bank ended in a nice win for the Gophs. And unlike the Wisconsin game, we actually capitalized on our opponent’s miscues in full, and that seemed to be what made the difference. Our defense made plays, and the offense cashed in on them. Good stuff. That’s what good football teams do. So does that mean we’re a good football team? Not yet – but we’re getting there.

If you only look at the box score, you’d notice immediately on offense that running the ball was clearly the priority for the Gophers (44 out of 55 plays), and that passing was secondary. If you actually watched the game though, you saw that Adam Weber was passing the ball so badly that it made it almost necessity. Now I’m not a Weber apologist, and I don't bag on him as much as some this year, but some of his throws against Purdue were truly brutal. I’m now starting to realize with him that you never know whether ‘Good Web’ or ‘Bad Web’ is going to show up on any given offensive series. He has put together some brilliant drives this season where he goes 6-6 or 7-7 passing – aka ‘Good Web’. Conversely, he has shown us some of the worst 3 and outs we’ve ever seen. Against Purdue ‘Bad Web’ showed up too early and often for us to go back to him later and let him sling the ball. Hence the 9 passes thrown.

Luckily for us Kevin Whaley, D’uane Bennett, and DeLeon Eskeridge all appeared to have gotten their sleep on Friday night and ran smart and hard. In fact, they ran well enough for us to not have to risk exposing ‘Bad Web’ anymore. What a luxury. Whaley in particular looked like he had something to prove, and showed great burst through the line, and speed to the edge. And give the O-line credit, they run-blocked very well against a decent Purdue front 7 (although the little pass blocking they had to do was still pretty dreadful). 3rd center D.J. Burris seemed to fill in nicely for Trey Davis when he went down too (I say both get a 1 game pass on some rough QB-C exchanges).

Along with the run game, the defense was solid. Yes, they gave up a ton of yardage to Joey Elliot, but he did throw the ball 47 times, and only completed 25 balls. If you can keep a college QB to a 53% completion percentage, that’s a-ok with me. Never mind the fact that Purdue ran 77 plays to our 54. Ralph Bolden was bottled up nicely by the front 7, and held to a 3.2 ypc average. Lee Campbell led the way and did what a senior captain at LB should. Make plays. And Keenan Cooper filled in nicely at LB for the injured Triplett (came out with another shoulder stinger). BPT (the self-named 'Big Play Traye' Simmons) also made an appearance this week in the box score, with a great scoop and score on Campbell's FG block, and a nice pick late in the game to keep Purdue off the scoreboard the rest of the way. I’m also really starting to see the rotation of the front 4 develop into a pretty decent unit. We have 6 or 7 guys rotating through there that can make things happen. The best play of the game for me – bar none - was DE Anthony Jacobs sack of Elliott by shoving a hapless Ralph Bolden into him. That’s the exactly kind of physicality I want to see in our Big 10 team!

And Stoudemire? Once again, my guy failed to bust that kick return TD, but he continues to hand the offense great field position. Who knows – if Jay Thomas hadn’t fielded that first kick, he might well have gone the distance. Thomas, I know you’re a senior, but let Troy have the ball!

So what did we learn this week? A bunch of things. First, we learned that Purdue can’t seem to tie their own shoes without falling down and splitting their face open. And when they do that our defense will gladly take the ball away. Second, we saw first hand the value of running the ball (if the Northwestern game didn’t convince you already), and that we NEED to when ‘Bad Web’ shows up early in the game. Third, we CAN win a ball game without having Eric Decker make 10 catches and 2 TDs. And finally, we learned that some Gopher football fans aren’t quite ready to transition to outdoor football yet, as evidenced by the sell-out status of the game, in spite of the open patches of seats. Screw you, no-shows. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

It’s off to Happy Valley this coming weekend. No better time than now for Coach Brew to get his signature win… Go Gophers!

The Boilers come to The Bank - Purdue Preview

Remember the good old days? When a visit from Purdue used to mean a double overtime shoot out, with the over-under set at, oh, around 90? When the likes of Mike Alstott and Chris Darkins rushed for like 1,000 yards combined. Yup - seems like only yesterday that these teams had absolutely no interest in stopping each other, and defense was purely an after thought.

All those years of shared offense and putrid defense came to a grinding halt last season when the Gophs went to West Lafayette on their Homecoming last year and stunned the Boilermaker and Gopher fans alike with a stalwart defensive effort, winning 17-6. We were 7-1 following that win, and ranked #20 in the nation. The Gopher Roundtable Road Crew (an explanation of that for another day) was there and we were all basking in the good times.

Purdue comes up our way this year, and can return the favor of spoiling our 2009 Homecoming, and this game could return the series to its recent high yardage, high scoring ways. The Boilers are 1-4 this season, and have played a tough schedule, losing close to the likes of Oregon, Notre Dame, and most recently, common foe Northwestern. In the process though, they've racked up some pretty impressive offensive numbers. First year head coach Danny Hope had preached a more balanced attack this year, and it seems to have rejuvenated a team that struggled to score last season. Purdue has their own triplets, Senior QB Joey Elliot leads the Big Ten in passing, sophomore RB Ralph Bolden is second in the league in rushing, and WR Keith Smith is second only to Eric Decker in catches. Senior backup RB Jaycen Taylor is no slouch himself, and will also warrant defensive attention.

Defensively, I'm less concerned. Purdue ranks dead last in the B-10 in nearly every defensive category, and played their best defensive game against Northwestern last week, and still yielded 27 points (although their offense did them no favors, turning the ball over 6 times).

The track record of Purdue's defense this year, makes me feel very confident that Minnesota will win this game. Partly because THEY HAVE TO WIN. This is a must-win for Purdue too, but I like the edge unfamiliar settings will give us against the Boilers. The Gophers absolutely cannot afford to lose another game at home this year, and they know it. Coach Brew will pull out all the stops to get this win. With road trips to PSU and OSU looming, a win now is paramount to keeping any kind of bowl game in the picture.

So what do we need to do to ensure a win? On offense, the O-line is key again - as it will be all year. Senior center Jeff Tow-Arnett is out for the season (replaced by backup Trey Davis), and its sounding like Matt Stommes may be surpassed by Dom Alford on the depth chart at left tackle. We can only hope that Alford and Davis are up to the task. Perhaps a little shakeup on the line is exactly what is needed here. Look for the Gophs to try and establish the run again early and often with Bennett, Eskeridge, and Whaley rotating thru and the ball going more to the back who shows the best vision and patience in getting to and thru holes.

Weber to Decker is a forgone conclusion, and Purdue will no doubt watch the tape vs. the Wisconsin game and look to drape a safety over the top on Deck. The Badger blogosphere seems to have strangely claimed that they had success in shutting down Decker, since they "had a scheme to make Decker disappear" and limited his catches in the second half (the failure of this 'analysis' is that they fail to mention that Minnesota had the ball a paltry 8:05 in the second half, and ran only 16 plays). If any one shut down Decker, it was John Clay, not anyone in the Wisconsin's secondary. Ah well, its a compliment when 14o yards and a TD is considered successful. Purdue will similarly scheme to take Decker away and fail. Possibly equal parts Decker's incredible ability and Weber's constant forcing the ball to him in spite of coverage. What really needs to happen this game though, is for another WR to have a break out game and draw a little attention away from Mr. Decker. Brandon Green, are you listening? You're gonna see favorable coverage, so stay in Weber's earhole about getting open. I'm betting Jed Fisch will be watching a lot of film with Weber this week, and Adam will come to play this week, ready to check down to Green and Tow-Arnett more than in weeks past, to the entire offense's benefit.

And what about MarQueis Gray? I know I fully expected to see the kid bounding thru the Badger secondary, but it wasn't to be. Maybe this week? I'm not counting on it any more. If he's not ready to read defenses under center yet, then he isn't. But could still get him on the field in a greater capacity to keep opposing defenses guessing and game planning for one more body.

Defensively, the front seven face another good pair of RBs, but luckily neither tips the scales at 245 lbs like big John Clay did. Perhaps foolishly, I believe the Gopher defense actually did a decent job at GETTING to Clay last week, it was bringing him down that was the problem. There were maroon jerseys getting after him at the line of scrimmage, but then they got dragged for 5-6 yards a crack. I don't think Bolden or Taylor can do this, and we should see improvement against the run this week. Bolden in particular has been involved in the passing game, and with good success (10 catches for 165 yards). This is the biggest concern to me - and the front seven will need to watch for him sliding out of the backfield. Joey Elliot has legs too, and has ripped off a 58-yard dash this season. The secondary will have to contend Elliot throwing to WRs Keith Smith and the Aaron Valentin. The secondary may struggle with these two as they are both big (6'+) and experienced. Valentin is also a dangerous kick return man, but has a bit of a hands issue, fumbling three times this year already on returns. You'd better believe that the excellent kick coverage squad of the Gophs will be looking to chop that ball out of there every chance they get.

And speaking of special teams, what would a Gopher Bandanna Guy game preview be without a Troy Stoudemire TD return prediction? Yet again, Stoudemire ripped off big gains again against Wisconsin, but no paydirt. He's apparently tired of coming close to breaking one too. Purdue is the worst kick cover squad in the league, so I'll continue to press that he WILL score on a return this game (provided Jay Thomas can keep from racking up penalties this week).

Predictions: Minnesota 35, Purdue 23

Boilermaker Player of the Game: Keith Smith - 9 catches, 135 yards, 2 TDs

Gopher Player of the Game: Troy Stoudemire - 190 return yards, 1 TD; 60 receiving yards, 1 TD