Sunday, October 11, 2015

Pics from the Game

Let's start with the obvious: if you took my advice yesterday and laid money on Army to cover the spread, you got your ass handed to you.  Ugh.  What a performance.  Duke's defense was more than up to the task of stopping Army's triple-option, and for the first time all season, Army met an offense that could make them pay for every single stupid mistake they made.  As it happens, this was a lot of mistakes.

Firstie AJ Schurr started this game but got hurt, forcing Ahmad Bradshaw to come in.  Bradshaw fumbled three times in his first seven snaps under center.  By the time he got his feet under him, Army was down by three scores.


Army moved the ball a couple of times in the second half, but they had 44 yards of total offense in the first half, and they never punched it into the end zone despite 1st-and-goal from the 5 and the 2.

*le sigh*

I don't know what the impact of this game is going to be on the season's statistics, but I know it won't be good.  ESPN and p-wins both use past performance as an indicator of where a team is in terms of performance relative to actual record.  P-wins in particular is supposed to tell you how good your team is relative to your wins and losses in an attempt to account for "lucky breaks" in games.  By that measure, Army was improving rapidly.  This game will certainly bring the team back to earth, but it's hard to say exactly how bad the damage will be or what it does to the team's expectations going forward.  Nevertheless, winning and losing are both habit-forming, and this was a demoralizing loss.  Army needs to get itself righted against Bucknell next week, or this season may yet get out of hand.  It feels like our fragile but promising rebuilding effort is now in some jeopardy.

Amber tried on my new hat right after we parked.
It wound up being a beautiful day, but it was chilly when
we got there.
I was all fired up before the game.  I wasn't sure Army was going to win,
but I figured it would at least be an exciting contest.
It wasn't.
The battle of the bands at halftime.  Spectators were riveted because this
was so much more exciting than the actual game.
Class of '95 in the stands.  We quit watching in the 4th quarter & just shot
the breeze.



That is awesome.  It's important to remember that football is hardly the only sport that gets played at the Academy.  It's just the highest profile sport.  I watched part of that Sprint Football game on ESPN3, and it was a beat down.  But then again, Army always does well in sports where big money and/or big-time recruiting aren't factors.

If you're wondering, Sprint Football's Army-Navy game is October 31st.
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1 comment:

  1. AlboneOctober 11, 2015 at 10:43 AM

    Despite the big loss, it looked like you had a good time which is awesome.

    ReplyDelete

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