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Boca Raton Bowl–Zips @ Owls


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1 hour ago, Solarplanet said:

Our tempo is killer. We move way faster than the chain crew (they usually run to catch up). This one time we ran 4-5 plays and scored in less than 30 seconds, just imagine how fast we are. And I think what makes it so hard is our offense has a lot of moving parts and trick plays. 

From a trusted source, when asked about FAU's offense against North Texas: "What I did notice was that every player that had the ball and was tackled did a great job of locating and firing the ball back at the ball-spotting official.  You could tell that was drilled into every single player on that offense. No one just dropped the ball or did anything other than get it into the hands of the official..."  

 

1 hour ago, Solarplanet said:

I think a good way to watch that offense is to look at our conference championship game last week. 

Good idea, replay found here on WatchESPN  Attendance was 14 thousand for this home championship game, can't image more than that for the bowl. 

 

Watching this game for a tad, there is no way the Zips defense will be able to make their typical substitutions during a drive. I'm glad they have a bunch of extra practices to prepare for this. 

 

#derailthetrain

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2 minutes ago, scottditzen said:

Listening to WKNR just now. Aaron and Tony both think we're gonna have a great game and they're considering going down there to broadcast live. It may just be polite talk of course (Akron is a station sponsor), but if I'm the U of A I'm doing whatever I can to make that happen. 

 

Maybe I am a little cynical, but I suspect they would not be making such a statement if they were travelling to Boise for the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

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13 minutes ago, clarkwgriswold said:

 

Maybe I am a little cynical, but I suspect they would not be making such a statement if they were travelling to Boise for the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.

 

LOL.  I've known Tony for a long time.  Trust me.  He's definitely thinking about visiting South Beach.  

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I'm not sure how talented they are (outside of the RB) after only watching the C-USA Championship. The tempo of their offense is most definitely cause for concern. Late subs and getting set late have screwed us many a times this season. Similarly to Toledo (twice now), we can't get down multiple scores early. Let's hope the 3rd time is the charm.

 

You play the game for a reason!

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Adding some more info regarding FAU's offense....

 

We are far from one-dimensional.  Singletary is no-doubt our best player, and he leads the country with 29 rushing TDs.  We didn't start feeding him the ball until the 4th game of the season.  But we also run the ball with a number of different guys including WRs and our QB.  Our backup RB has nearly 700 yards rushing, and as a team we are the #6 rushing team in the country (and Akron has the next to last rushing D in the MAC).  That being said, we have been very creative on offense with trick plays, guys other than our QB throwing TDs, and when we do throw it we tend to complete LOTS of long passes because we run the ball so well.  In the CUSA championship game we threw for around 350 yards and had one receiver set a record with over 200 yards.  We also complete over 64% of our passes as a team.  If you saw the Baylor offense in previous years just wear people out, that is similar to what we do (Kendal Briles is our OC so that shouldn't be a surprise).  And as some of you have pointed out, we play fast.

 

As a team, but especially on offense, we looked somewhat lost in the first several games.  It took a month for the team to adapt to the new coaching staff and a fair amount of new players.  North Texas is a good CUSA team, and in the 2 wins against them we had 804 yard and 69 points in the regular season and 633 and 41 points in the championship (but should have been more of yards and points - we had nearly 400 yards in the first half and had a 34-0 lead midway through the 3rd quarter).

 

We may not show up for the bowl game, but if the last 10 weeks or so are any indication I would expect the offense to be a significant challenge for your defense.

 

Also - the attendance.  We have only had big crowds at 2 games (the first one against Navy had around 29k and our rivalry game with FIU had over 24k).  But in the previous 3 Boca Bowls, the smallest crowd has been 24k.  If you come, I think you will really like our stadium.

Edited by FAU_dad
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8 hours ago, FAU_dad said:

....in the previous 3 Boca Bowls, the smallest crowd has been 24k.  If you come, I think you will really like our stadium.

Good to know, that's exciting. Hope it's packed. I watched the North Texas game yesterday, and the stadium looks nice. The Zips should add palm trees and sunshine to their stadium. 

 

9 hours ago, FAU_dad said:

Singletary is no-doubt our best player, and he leads the country with 29 rushing TDs.  We didn't start feeding him the ball until the 4th game of the season. But we also run the ball with a number of different guys including WRs and our QB.  Our backup RB has nearly 700 yards rushing, and as a team we are the #6 rushing team in the country (and Akron has the next to last rushing D in the MAC). 

Singletary is first in the nation, OU's QB Rourke is second. Click here to see how the Zips handled Rourke. You are correct in reading the stats on rushing D, the stat you are missing is the Akron defense is pretty successful in the red zone (25th in the nation). The character of the defense this year has been giving up yards, but limiting points in the red zone, bend, don't break, as some like to say. 

 

Thanks for taking the time to register, and post. :wave:

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A little more attendance detail for the bowl game (this is year 4)...

 

December 23, 2014

Marshall 52 Northern Illinois 23 - attendance: 29,419

December 22, 2015

Toledo 32 Temple 17 - attendance: 25,908

December 20, 2016

Western Kentucky 51 Memphis 31 - attendance; 24,726

 

Capacity for the stadium is just under 30k.

 

Our students will already be out for the semester, so I don't expect a huge contingency - they have been relatively small but very loud all season in the North endzone.  The bowl is run by the same group that puts on the Orange Bowl, so it is a class act and I think your players and coaches will be treated well and will enjoy the experience.  And let's face it, the campus is 5 minutes from the beach and it will probably be upper-70s to around 80 degrees.  So the fans that come should also enjoy it, too.

 

Say what you will about Kiffin (and Briles), but coaching has been the difference.  FAU got a lot of good and bad publicity for the "Last Chance U" stuff between signing day and our opening game, but in reality there are very few new players making a huge impact on the team - the biggest contributors are kids that were already on the roster or a true Freshman WR (Wright).  John Franklin (grad-transfer from Auburn) has some highlights, but this has been kids who were 3-9 last year winning 10 games this year.  Driskel (QB) was inserted as the starter against Buffalo and struggled that game, but since then we have gone even more up-tempo and started running all kinds of schemed running plays and teams have struggled to keep up.  And our best WR (Woods) was suspended for the first half of the season, but watch the CUSA championship game and you can see he will most likely be playing on Sundays next year.

 

Sorry for the long posts.  I try to be respectful on other people's boards, but given we don't know much about each other I thought I would provide some insight into how the program has turned around, how this team has turned around since week 4, and some of the players to watch.

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1 hour ago, Dr Z said:

Singletary is first in the nation, OU's QB Rourke is second. Click here to see how the Zips handled Rourke.

 

 

Not sure how to interpret that.  You guys seemed to win that game on offense (most points you scored all season other than AR-Pine Bluff) and winning the TO battle 3-0.  Rourke averaged 11 yards per carry, had 165 yards rushing, and ran for 2 TDs (and caught 1).  I know 68 came on the one TD, but that is still 97 yards on his other 14 carries (over 6.9 YPC).  If Singletary averages 11 (or even 7) YPC it will be a very long game, because he will carry it 25+ times.

 

And the trick play with the reverse and throwback to the QB for a TD by Ohio - expect to see at least 4 or 5 (maybe more with 2+ weeks prep) of those kinds of plays from FAU.  They may not work, but when they have they have been game-changers and typically long TDs (we don't do those in the redzone - we do them out in the middle of the field).  And regarding your redzone defense - we have not been a great TD-scoring redzone offense.  We have 44 TDs on 59 trips (75%).  But on the year we have 68 TDs - so we have scored from outside the redzone 24 times (almost 2 per game).  That is kind of crazy, but there are several "homerun hitters" on this team.

 

But this is what is great about a bowl game like these.  Teams step way outside their conferences and play against teams that they don't know about and nobody really knows what the game will look like until the guys are on the field.  We have just been way faster and more athletic than anybody we have played in CUSA, but that is all we have played for the past 10 weeks.

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1 hour ago, FAU_dad said:

December 23, 2014

Marshall 52 Northern Illinois 23 - attendance: 29,419

December 22, 2015

Toledo 32 Temple 17 - attendance: 25,908

December 20, 2016

Western Kentucky 51 Memphis 31 - attendance; 24,726

 

I know FAU doesn't have a huge following, but I would still expect that attendance will even be higher since they are playing in this game.  I don't know how well all of those teams listed in previous games were able to get their own fans to travel.  Maybe plenty of this was local Floridians wanting to attend a bowl game?

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2 hours ago, FAU_dad said:

A little more attendance detail for the bowl game (this is year 4)...

 

December 23, 2014

Marshall 52 Northern Illinois 23 - attendance: 29,419

December 22, 2015

Toledo 32 Temple 17 - attendance: 25,908

December 20, 2016

Western Kentucky 51 Memphis 31 - attendance; 24,726

 

Capacity for the stadium is just under 30k.

 

 

 

Tickets sold?  Or butts in the seats?  B)

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FAU's following (and really all of South Florida's) is somewhat apathetic towards sports.  People like winners, so I expect the following to get better just like has been seen with Miami playing a couple of high-profile games against VT and Notre Dame a few weeks ago.  But with so much other stuff going on in and around the area college football has taken even a worse beating regarding fan attendance here than it has in other places.  The bowl season and the number of visitors we always start getting this time of year will help (golf courses are full and charge about twice the normal rate from December to April).  Even so, I also don't expect those numbers are butts in seats but are tickets sold.  It will help being a night game, it will hurt being the only game on ESPN, and it will hurt being a Tuesday.  And if we eliminate a few thousand students attending the game, I am guessing the stadium will be lucky to have 20k actually there in-person but will report 25k as the attendance from ticket sales.

 

The school itself has about 30k students, but that is spread over like 5 different campuses.  Boca is the main campus, but is still a relatively new school and is emerging from being a commuter school to a growing university.  There are only something like 4000 on-campus beds (dorms and university apartments) in Boca.

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After watching a good chunk of the FAU v North Texas, I think Ohio is probably the most similar team we have faced. The game against North Texas definitely revealed some major vulnerabilities in the passing game that I expect Coach Amato to exploit. 

 

I also think we have opportunities with the run and also the big play. 

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2 hours ago, FAU_dad said:

FAU's following (and really all of South Florida's) is somewhat apathetic towards sports.  People like winners, so I expect the following to get better just like has been seen with Miami playing a couple of high-profile games against VT and Notre Dame a few weeks ago.  But with so much other stuff going on in and around the area college football has taken even a worse beating regarding fan attendance here than it has in other places.  The bowl season and the number of visitors we always start getting this time of year will help (golf courses are full and charge about twice the normal rate from December to April).  Even so, I also don't expect those numbers are butts in seats but are tickets sold.  It will help being a night game, it will hurt being the only game on ESPN, and it will hurt being a Tuesday.  And if we eliminate a few thousand students attending the game, I am guessing the stadium will be lucky to have 20k actually there in-person but will report 25k as the attendance from ticket sales.

 

The school itself has about 30k students, but that is spread over like 5 different campuses.  Boca is the main campus, but is still a relatively new school and is emerging from being a commuter school to a growing university.  There are only something like 4000 on-campus beds (dorms and university apartments) in Boca.

 

If it wasn't for the gorgeous, year-round weather you guys have, you would think this is Akron. Are you sure "FAU_dad" isn't a typo? It could easily be UA_dad based on the similarities between the universities. :lol:

Edited by lilroodude
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1 hour ago, Captain Kangaroo said:

3 of our commits this year also reportedly have offers to FAU.

Current D1 (FBS) Offer list for each commit:

 

Timothy Scippio - Akron, FAU

Rich Hall - Akron, FAU

Keyondre White - Akron, Army, BG, Buffalo, FAU, Illinois, Louisville, Minnesota, USF, Syracuse, UAB

 

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An entertainingmoment from the press conference, summarized, here.

 

Bowden: We are the Akron Zips, which is our mascot, the kangaroo, which is [named] Zippy, that comes from actually a zipper that came from a boot. But now that that’s all said, the players really like the Z [helmet sticker], The Z is a cool thing. They like that better than the kangaroo head.

 

Kiffin: I’m not very educated. Did you just say there’s live kangaroos in Akron?

 

Bowden (referring to Kiffin’s previouse school, Alabama, which has an elephant as a mascot): There are no elephants in Tuscaloosa. You know the deal. People do crazy things. People do crazy things. I grew up in West Virginia we had the Mannington Gators. There’s no gators in West Virginia, either. But anyway.

 

Mayor Haynie: We have Owls.

 

Kiffin: I’ve actually not seen an Owl, so that might not be true, really. I saw raccoons on our campus this morning when I was driving in, though.

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(More from the press conference posted above)

 

Anonymous reporter to coach Kiffin, "there are a lot of rumors floating around, I guess that's the elephant in the room, I won't ask the question" Kiffin "thank you"

 

Bobby Bowden is coming in the 17th. Coach (Terry) Bowden said "I'm known as an SOB down here in the south.......Son of Bobby."

 

Coach Bowden had to fly down for this conference, miss practice, and had to fly back that night to make today's practice. 

 

Kato was the only player coach talked about in his opening statement. "we have a redshirt freshman at QB that is exciting and from this area"

 

The MC said "The PGA will be the host for Akron", not exactly sure what that meant. I'm assuming that is there hotel?

 

How do you use the extra practices?  Coach Bowden "we might have practice for an hour, cut practice, and work the players that aren't playing, we will spend time developing our young players for next year. We only have 15 practices in the spring, we get a bonus by having half (more) now" 

 

 

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