Hooray!

[kyyote]

That is the hardest one, sometimes.  Congratulations to the entire team-players and coaches.  It would seem that the cupboard wasn't entirely bare.  Has it finally all come together or was it simply a matter of playing Rice with the same amount of resistance you might expect from the refried beans and rice,  mixed together with some salsa from the jar on the table, on a Combo #3 at Avila's.  Middle Tennessee should tell us quite a bit.

[Minermojo]

Yep, as they say Ky, the Miners broke the ice. Let's not stop. Miners keep this going. Congrats.

[liebestraum]

UTEP had 310 yards of total offense in the first half; 100 in the second.  The defense gave up 95 yards in the first half and about 300 in the second.  I actually thought the defense played well - with the glaring exception of giving up TDs to Rice on two fourth down plays.  That was ridiculous.

I always enjoy going to games at Rice.  I think they have the right attitude about college football - they don’t take it too seriously.  The halftime show with the MOB (Marching Owl Band) was great - a commentary on the Texas Senate race with formations showing “TED” and “BETO” - and a slight dig at El Paso in the process.

For those who weren’t there - the parking lot around the stadium was almost full to capacity, and yet there weren’t that many in the stadium.  The reason?  There was a Filipino Food Festival going on - there were way more people there for that than the game. 

At any rate, the last time I’d been to a UTEP/Rice game in Houston was the infamous game the Miners lost after being up 24 points with 10 minutes to go in the game. There was a bit of “deja-vu all over again” there in the second half.

Hope this leads to some good football (i.e., wins) these last three games.

lieb

[SisyphusMiner]

So we played one half of solid football on both offense and defense and crushed one of the bottom teams in the league.  We were beating them badly enough that when it all fell apart in the second half we still won.

We played entire games of solid football on D and hung with the top teams in the league.

Generally we acknowledge a need to upgrade a number of "skill" positions on offense, and one half of solid ball may be all the current guys have in them.

But maybe the talent level in general is not as bad as we thought -- relative to CUSA at least.  I have not been able to watch the games but just judging by comments it sounds like week by week we are playing more fundamentally sound football.

[SisyphusMiner]

Separate question:  In the second half the defense gave up a lot.  My question is whether the players were no longer playing well,  did Rice make halftime adjustments that we were unable to respond to, or did we adjust our game plan to where we were no longer playing to win but playing not to lose?

[liebestraum]

I think Rice made adjustments and the Miners didn’t respond well.  It actually started at the very end of the first half when Rice went to a hurry-up offense to score a field goal when they had less than a minute to play.  The D gave up one really big pass play.  I remember seeing the halftime stats that said Rice had had 91 yards total offense in the first half.  I’ll be at least half of that came on that last drive.

They kept it up in the second half.  Then there were the two ridiculous TDs Rice scored on 4th down plays.  One might’ve been 4th and 10 and the other was 4th and 10+ yards.  In both cases, the receiver was able to get behind the D-back.

Still, the D got an intercepts immediately after UTEP’s QB threw a terrible pass to get picked off.  The problem was the O kept going 3-and-out.  At least the coaches were smart enough to call running plays to burn the clock.  I kept thinking we were doing OK, but that was tempered by the fact that we were playing Rice.  It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Middle Tennessee this weekend.

lieb