Monday, October 14, 2019

A Tale of Two Road Games


                I wasn’t planning to go to Tampa.  I really wasn’t.  The game was scheduled on a Thursday night, I couldn’t convince my normal travel group to make the trip and I really was broke.  In 2008/2009 I was spending every free dollar on Bearcat football.  Despite making it to 4 of the first 5 games of 2009 and 12 of the 14 in 2008 I was prepared to take this one off.  I can’t even remember how it happened, but I remember a guy I played a lot of pickup basketball with at the UC rec saying he wanted to drive down.  He said it would be a quick trip (he wasn’t exaggerating).  I said, what the hell, I’m in and just like that I was driving down to Tampa to watch the Bearcats play the #21 South Florida Bulls on a Thursday night. 
                When I tell you it was a quick trip, I’m not screwing with you.  We left Wednesday night.  We drove overnight, straight through.  We arrived at one of the people’s friend’s house around noon on Thursday.  We hung out at the pool for a few hours, then made our way into the city.  We tailgated briefly, then walked to Raymond James Stadium for the game.  We watched the game.  Took a few pictures after the game at the Pirate Ship, then got back in the car and drove back to Cincinnati.  We were home somewhere around 36 hours after we left.  But while we were there, we watched another memorable Bearcat performance.
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                It’s crazy how different life is in 2019.  I never even considered making the trip to Houston.  However, even if I had, that would have been vetoed immediately.  My wife’s friend had chosen this day to get married and my wife required my attendance.  With a 3:30 kickoff and a 5:30 wedding, I was generously looking at the prospect of watching the first half then figuring it out for the rest of the game.  Fall weddings remain the bane of my existence.  It was a great time, but it would have been a great time in the spring when I didn’t have to miss some snaps in a UC football game.  For a big midseason conference game on the road, I would be forced to watch what I could of the second half from my cell phone.  A far cry from 2009 when I drove nearly 2000 miles in 36 or so hours to watch in person.


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                In 2009, the Bearcats’ football schedule was backloaded with home games.  They opened the season with a win at Rutgers.  Their second conference game was this road trip to South Florida.  If they could somehow manage to beat the Bulls 4 of their next 5 games would be at Nippert.  The Bulls had opened the season 5-0 including a win at #19 Florida State.  They were ranked 21st in the country and seen by many as a contender in the conference.  The game was in prime time, on ESPN on a Thursday night.  It was a big game and a huge opportunity.  A win and the Bearcats would be 2-0 having already beaten two potential contenders for the conference championship on the road with a run of home games to come.  If they managed to win, it was hard to see the Bearcats losing before WVU came to Nippert for their second to last conference game.  At that point an undefeated season would be well within their sights.
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                Though this Houston team didn’t come in with the pedigree of South Florida in 2009, it was a similar opportunity for putting UC in the driver’s seat in the conference.  Having already beaten UCF, this figured to be UC’s toughest test before a home tilt with Temple late in the season.  After this week the schedule really opened with a home game against Tulsa, then drawing the three bottom east teams after the bye week.  With that slate of games, winning at Houston could really set UC up so that they could lock up the division at home against Temple.  Because of all the oddities surrounding Houston this had the makings of a trap type game, but the opportunity to set their season on a great course would be there. 
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                There was a really good crowd at Raymond James Stadium.  The place wasn’t full, but I’d bet there were 50,000+ there that night.  I was surprised how many UC fans flooded the upper deck.  A really fun contingent had made the trip.  UC fell behind 7-3 in the first quarter, but as they had done often that year they started to separate in the second quarter.  UC scored a touchdown after an interception put them on a short field to go up 10-7, then scored another TD on a long touchdown drive when Pike found Armon Binns to go up 17-7.  The Bulls added a field goal and UC took a 17-10 lead into the locker room.  However, early in the second half Tony Pike would be forced to leave the game with an injury and the game was very much in doubt.  The Bearcats would have to turn to sophomore Zach Collaros to hold on to the 17-10 lead. 
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                It looked like we might get another repeat of Marshall early against Houston.  The Bearcats met almost zero resistance in marching down the field for an opening drive TD.  The big play on the drive was a 44 yard connection between Ridder and Pierce.  After an interception on their second drive set up a field goal for Houston, the Bearcats struck immediately with a 75 yard TD pass to an utterly wide open Rashad Medaris.  However, the offense seemed to go into a shell for the rest of the half.  The Bearcats punted on 3 straight possessions, where they moved the ball a total of 17 yards.  Houston found the endzone on one of their drives, but the defense set up the offense again for a short field and UC capitalized allowing them to go into half with a 21-10 lead.  Despite the offense puttering for much of the half, the game seemed fairly well in hand. 
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                The Brian Kelly era is certainly the pinnacle of Bearcat football in my lifetime.  UC was in a BCS conference, ended up winning the conference twice in three years, going to two BCS bowls and ran up a 34-6 record in games Kelly coached.  The Brian Kelly era was known for winning, constant winning.  However, if there is another thing that seemed to constantly pop up during Kelly’s time at UC it was dealing with injuries to their quarterbacks. 
                The first season, much of that was brought on by the decision to bring in Ben Mauk.  Mauk was an injury plagued, graduate transfer from Wake Forest.  Mauk was incredibly fun to watch and played with a swagger that instantly endeared him to UC fans.  Who could forget him chopping wood at Rutgers?  However, I remember constantly reading stories about Mauk missing time in practice, or Mauk throwing a smaller ball to protect his arm during the week.  Despite ongoing injury concerns Mauk managed to start nearly every game that year, but when he was unable to go Dustin Grutza filled in admirably.  Grutza started and helped dominate when UC destroyed Miami and started and split time with Mauk in a dominant win against Marshall the next week.  Mauk battled through those injuries playing most the way the rest of the season. 
                2008 will forever be defined by winning the Big East Championship and making the Orange Bowl, but it was incredible for the QB issues UC faced game after game.  Grutza started the year as the man and in his second game at Oklahoma had a very good first half as UC tried to keep up with an incredible Oklahoma offense, getting it to the locker room at 21 to 13.  Grutza was knocked out of the game in the second half with what looked like a season ending injury and the Bearcats turned to Tony Pike.  Pike came in and kept the Bearcats rolling against Miami only to suffer an injury of his own the next week at Akron.  Pike would have to have surgery and miss 3-4 weeks.  The Bearcats replaced him with Zach Collaros, who helped finish a drive that got them in position for a field goal which turned out to be the game winner.  However, Zach wouldn’t keep the job.  The next two weeks the Bearcats turned to Chaz Anderson pulling out wins over Marshall and Rutgers (the later will forever be the Kevin Huber game to me…a real punt fest).  Pike attempted to come back to disastrous results against UConn, but was able to get it together for the end of the season, starting every game in the Bearcats’ five straight wins to lock up the conference.  Ultimately, he would struggle in their final game against Hawaii and Dustin Grutza would come back from the injury to lead a great fourth quarter comeback.  Four QBs, each contributing to wins in an 11 win season, culminating in an Orange Bowl.
                In 2009, Tony Pike had taken every meaningful snap going into the USF game.  UC was rolling and he was a huge reason why.  Up until that point, the only time UC fans had watched Collaros was that brief stretch at Akron.  And so it was, that Zach Collaros stepped in against USF, hoping to hold onto a 17-10 lead, on the road against the number 21 team in the country.
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                The talented USF defense seemed ready to make a play, when Collaros entered the game at QB.  The Bearcats ran the ball twice to start his day.  Pead lost a yard then Collaros ran for no game.  UC faced a third and eleven on their own 25.  Then came what I still consider the biggest (non Pitt game) play of the 2009 Bearcat football season.  I remember watching the play from the upper deck at Raymond James Stadium and the elation flowing through me as I saw the field open up.  Collaros took the snap and UC ran a designed sneak.  He caught a couple of blocks upfield, then sprung free.  He had a first down and was in a footrace for the endzone.  Collaros prevailed in the footrace giving the Bearcats a 24-10 lead they would never look back from. 


                Zach would later throw an interception and set USF up for a short TD drive to make it 24-17.  He immediately responded with a six play, 70 yard touchdown drive of his own.  On the drive he ran twice for 14 yards including his second TD rush of the day.  He completed a 43 yard pass to Ben Guidugli and a 15 yard pass to Isaiah Peed.  After the defense forced a three and out Collaros would lead the Bearcats on another long drive, this time settling for a FG to put UC up 34-17.  That would be the final score.  Pike had gone down and Collaros had answered the bell.  He would do so time and time again that season until Pike’s return.  The Bearcats were 2-0 in the Big East, having already beaten two contenders on the road.  They had a lot of games at Nippert on the horizon.  The feeling that this team could run the table and even be in the national title hunt was building. 


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                Houston came out in the second half against Cincinnati determined to make it interesting.  On their 4th play of the drive they connected for a 69 yard TD to cut UC’s lead to 21-17.  The teams traded punts, before UC missed a field goal on its second drive of the half.  UC’s offense had failed to score on 6 of its last 7 drives.  Its only TD came courtesy of the defense forcing and interception and giving UC a very short field.  UC’s biggest issue and the one glaring thing that holds this team back right now is the offense goes through stretches where it is very ineffective.  However, this season when that has happened (outside of the OSU game) the defense has bailed them out.
                And that is again what happened Saturday.  After UC missed its field goal, the defense forced a fumble.  The Bearcat offense capitalized going 34 yards in 7 plays for a touchdown.  However, Houston struck back with a TD of their own to make it a five point game.  They missed the two point conversion that would have cut it to three.  Nine minutes left in the game and everything was very much in doubt.  It was good to see the Bearcats respond with at least a field goal on their next drive.  Tre Tucker had a nice return and despite two penalties before the ball was even snapped, the Bearcat offense overcame the 1st and 20 picking up a few first downs before kicking a field goal to go up eight.
                By that time the cocktail hour at the wedding had ended and I was sitting at the table as salad was being delivered, with my phone in my lap and youtubetv streaming.  I was trying not to make it noticeable, but my wife made a few annoyed comments about it.  No surprise the Bearcat defense came up with another huge play to ice it.  The pass was deflected behind the line of scrimmage and Perry Young ran under it as if that was how the play had been designed the entire time.  He caught the pass and waltzed into the endzone.  UC fans could breathe easy. The Bearcats were escaping Houston with a hard fought win.  I threw my fist in the air and did a couple fist shakes, before putting my phone away for the rest of the wedding. 


                As the Bearcats enter the back half of their schedule, it is hard not to start looking ahead.  The next four are against probably the four worst teams in the conference.  Tulsa has shown flashes, but UC gets them at home.  A trip to ECU after a buy week should be scare free and UConn might as well not even get off the bus on November 9.  USF has shown some signs of life, so that game on November 16 may be a bit scary when it gets there, but as we stand it’s hard to imagine UC not going into the Temple game 9-1 with a chance to clinch the Eastern Division of the AAC.  UC’s win at Houston successfully got them through a potential land mind, and now the next four games are about taking care of business against lesser teams.  If they do, they’ll set up an exciting last 2 (hopefully 3 games including the AAC Championship) and an opportunity to be playing in a major bowl for the first time since 2009. 

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