The Miners toughed out a win over a real team. The Lobos may not be SEC quality but they expect to be able to just be better than the Miners and they weren't. This win was a huge win for the team's psyche on multiple levels. As a team, offense, defense, and special teams it showed an effort where each played their roles perfectly. Each showed the desire and ability to deserve to be in the foxhole with the others. Huge! And then, for each part it was the kind of effort that players build on and feed off of. Pride and competition are born and feed voraciously off of games like this. Games like this are battles fought and the survivors/winners are tempered in the fire. The strength found becomes strength of confidence. I said that the Miners where going to "bully" the Lobos and they did. I say that not to brag but to argue the point I was making, admittedly hoping as much as believing, was that they have over years of running into brick walls developed an ability to bust some bricks and the Lobos were the perfect team to test it against as the Lobos wanted to physically dominate-not win with finesse, but by physically bullying the Miners. It will shake them to their core to know that they were beat, physically beat, by the Miners and hurt their team almost as much as it builds our team. When the game was on the line the Miners didn't cover their heads and beg for mercy. They threw punches! Not wildly flailing about. Body punches. Rocky busting sides of beef punches. They not only fought, they won. Toe to toe, trading best shots battled and won a hard earned decision. Close but clear.
The Monarchs are a well balanced team, offensively. Defensively, they give up 315 yards a game to our 319(we are ranked next to each other as listed) but they give up 32 points a game to our 25. That is the problem for them and the reason we will win this one for us. The time of possession battle will be won by the Miners. The bullies will be even more bullish. This is kind of like the games between lower power conferences against the big boys where the one team competes pretty well but around midway through the third quarter the big boys start just powering through. Don't get me wrong. I'm not say we are big boys. I'm saying that we aspire to play big boy style football. The thing is, playing big boy style football when you can't looks like steaming dog shit and smells about the same. I do believe that we have turned a corner. We are able to at least field a reasonable facsimile that is close enough to beat weaker teams that rely on finesse and tricks with good old power football.
I believe that teams have a tendency to best be able to defend against the style of offense their own team plays. The opposite is also true. Teams that emphasize the run have trouble with the pass and teams that are pass happy can't stop the run. But there is an old saying that says three things can happen with a pass and two of them aren't good. We have finally moved from a run only team that can't defend the pass to a power running team with a dangerous passing game to balance it out. We have become the better team, theoretically.
In fact we have gone from a one dimensional team that struggled to even do that, to a team that could become a team built right. I have made fun of the "trust the process" line for years, and I may have been justified at the way it was done, but I may be seeing the process finally showing results.
Finally, on the penalties, I think that they are a reflection of power discovered and needing to actually having to learn to harness it. I want it harnessed but I would rather have a horse to harness than a harness and no horse.
