A Rainy Day at McGuirk

It started raining torrents as I slogged back to my truck. A soggy end of a disappointing day. I had a feeling this was going to be a close game. Both teams had very good defenses. Both teams have had inconsistent offenses.

Once again, the UMass defense played well enough to win. They only gave up 10 points. JMU had a fair amount of yards, but they had to punt seven times. The Dukes had the ball on the UMass six yard line and the defense held them to a field goal. No JMU points in the second half.

The UMass offense again struggled. However, the JMU defense is very good. I watched the Dukes defense on a TV game destroy a Delaware offense that ran all over us. This game was going to be tough going offensively no matter what the situation. We needed to play error free football, and then turned over the ball on the first three offensive series. That was the game right there.

Mrs Blog didn't like the punt on the four and four, and neither did the crowd, but I can see the coaches point. If we went for it and failed---and four and four is a long shot ---the game was over. We had three time outs and the Dukes punter was only averaging 26 yards a punt. The UMass defense was holding , but then JMU hit their only long pass of the game . I was reminded of another loss in the rain at Rhode Island, when the Rams completed what felt like their only pass of the game, to win.

We need to play for pride at the Pride next week and end with a winning record.

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UMass write-up with notes, quotes and more here.

An abbreviated story from JMU here.

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