Offical Postgame thread

[heitclone]

I'm by no means disappointed in tonights game. As everyone said the run defense was suspect at times but I don't think thats a shocker. Its even more obvious that this offense is going to have to have produce or its going to be another struggle. I'm pleased with the running game, AA made most of the right reads and ARob was solid as always. Schwartz earned more carries IMO, he looked like the downhill runner we've expected him to be. I don't think Money was spectacular but he showed he's going to be a factor in this offense, and you've got to feel good for Hamilton. If he hauls in that pass from Reynolds we're talking about almost as good a night as any WR has had. I'm still anxious to see what this passing game can do when Darks and Sed get involved. Johnson still has to prove he's going to be a weapon but we know what Darks can do.

 

[kingcy]

Re: no props for Jesse Smith?

He had every tackle there for awhile til Sims took over and dominated. QUOTE]

Except he was out of positon on a few big run plays. He did have a nice game though.

 

[KneeGusto]

Exactly. I remember last year that Kansas State ran a fake punt in the very first non-conference game that they had in control. Me at home was thinking, wtf? But the announcers correctly said that now, every team had to spend time preparing for that play, whether or not KSU ever used it again.

You can sometimes be too vanilla. Need to make other teams waste practice time on certain formations, plays, etc that you won't even use.

That's an old George Allen thing. Kinda wish Morningside hadn't killed him - but that's another discussion.

The theory is - you run 1 or 2 or 3 trick plays in your first game against <insert opponent here> and you steal 10 minutes of practice each day from all your opponents the rest of the year.

It's a sound coaching decision. It causes an opposing LB or a Safety to play every down slightly differently the rest of the year.

 

[temperflare]

A win is a win.

Tough game to watch for the most part. Pretty sure Iowa's OL is going to murder our D-Line. NDSU's OL had their way with us. Our tackling is still below par.

Our D-Line is where I was REALLY hoping for some improvement. I don't see much improvement there. I did see some improvement in tackling, but we had more than a few missed tackles that went for big gains.

 

[Cyclonepride]

Yes sir. There is a a first and only time for everything. Another advantage of nightgames.....

Hopefully you didn't come away from the game with more than just a win under your belt

 

[BryceC]

After this game, I hope the opening game on Thursday nights are here to stay. People can't use the attendance excuse anymore.

Agreed, I'll shut up about it, 48k was a great showing Cyclone fans.

Anybody else think the game atmosphere was really lame though? I hope we were just saving it for next week or something. Maybe that's why they turned the speakers up so much, because nobody was making any noise.

 

[cyclonenum1]

No, there is no statistical evidence for thursdays being inherently better. We practically had to give away tickets to this game to get the attendance figures we did.

I agree.

What I really don't get is why we move our game to Thursday night with no national type TV coverage. The big reason teams (and conferences) move games from a Saturday to a weekday is to get the big national TV stage...not just for the heck of it. I do not get the rationale for doing this.

If you were like me...living a long distance away and watching ESPN you would not even know ISU was playing...it was never even on the bottom line from what I saw.

 

[cyrocksmypants]

I didn't read the whole thread, so I'm probably re-capping what everyone said.

Arnaud was alright. ARob was very good. The o-line was so-so. The defense...I was getting very frustrated watching them try to tackle. I learned how to wrap people up when I was in 8th grade football, but apparently some of these guys never learned it. It seemed like every play someone was thowing their shoulder into the running back with their head down, only to look up and find out he bounced right off of them.

I'm kind of disappointed in our performance, but I won't let it overtake my excitement about the win and for our season.

One thing I was VERY disappointed in was the crowd. I was in section 17 in the SE corner, and ISU was on defense down there on a third and five within the twenty, yet I was the only one clapping. Okay, I like to stand and scream, and I realize not everyone does that, but is it so bad to clap for your team when they need you to make some noise? What's the sense of going to a game if you're not even going to clap or get excited for your team.

I just don't get that one, and if anyone can explain a logic to it, I'd love to hear.

 

[HandSanitizer]

Jamie Pollard is not stupid when it comes to "giving away tickets" he is actually pretty smart about it.
1. You offer cheap tickets for the first game and get a full house.
2. People then typically end up paying $15 for parking and $4 for a water.

I don't have a warm fuzzy feeling after week one, but its a win. We have some injuries and we have to improve a ton or next week will be a really long game.

On a side note. They need to really address that speaker system. Sounds like they might have blown out one or something.....Otherwise, The new concourses are beautiful. It really made me think how cool it would look in there if the sound endzone was done.

 

[CyinCo]

I didn't read the whole thread, so I'm probably re-capping what everyone said.

Arnaud was alright. ARob was very good. The o-line was so-so. The defense...I was getting very frustrated watching them try to tackle. I learned how to wrap people up when I was in 8th grade football, but apparently some of these guys never learned it. It seemed like every play someone was thowing their shoulder into the running back with their head down, only to look up and find out he bounced right off of them.

I'm kind of disappointed in our performance, but I won't let it overtake my excitement about the win and for our season.

One thing I was VERY disappointed in was the crowd. I was in section 17 in the SE corner, and ISU was on defense down there on a third and five within the twenty, yet I was the only one clapping. Okay, I like to stand and scream, and I realize not everyone does that, but is it so bad to clap for your team when they need you to make some noise? What's the sense of going to a game if you're not even going to clap or get excited for your team.

I just don't get that one, and if anyone can explain a logic to it, I'd love to hear.

Lets not complain about the crowd. Jeez. It was a the biggest opening crowd since we opened against Iowa in the 80s.

 

[CyCloned]

glad they won and that monkey is off the teams back. The defense looked a little lost at times and I think the headphone thing had a lot to do with this. The DL did not play well, but the LBers were to problem on both of the long runs. Hopefully some of the problems are correctable.

There were way too many dropped passes tonight. Some of the passes were not perfect, but guys need to make these catches to win games and keep the drives going. Even the first long pass into the endzone was catchable. The NDSU DB did a good job of knocking it out of the receivers hands, but good receivers always seem to make those plays.

 

[Clark]

My 2 cents:

The offense looked ok. The receivers had a lot of drops (especially early on) but ARob looked good.

Defense was pretty bad. The tackling was horrible, the d-line was getting crushed by a FCS o-line, and the TE/FB was consistantly wide open.

Also, I highly doubt ISU was holding much back from their playbook. ISU was pretty lucky to have even been leading at halftime (the fumble by NDSU at their 1, non-review of ARob's fumble before AA's TD run).

 

[LoyalSonForever]

Posters beware!

Please don't feed the trolls.

 

[CyinCo]

My 2 cents:

The offense looked ok. The receivers had a lot of drops (especially early on) but ARob looked good.

Defense was pretty bad. The tackling was horrible, the d-line was getting crushed by a FCS o-line, and the TE/FB was consistantly wide open.

Also, I highly doubt ISU was holding much back from their playbook. ISU was pretty lucky to have even been leading at halftime (the fumble by NDSU at their 1, non-review of ARob's fumble before AA's TD run).

I agree with this assessment. My friends at the game kept asking why I didn't look happy. I expect the O to look better than they did. They just didn't look sharp. Timing of routes looked a bit off. The real positive I saw is we freqently got 4 or 5 yards on a first down carry. That is better than the 2nd and longs we seemed to have every time last season.

 

[tejasclone]

Thinking back to when McCarney had his first game vs Wyoming, I'd say that Rhodes and company did better than McCarney too. Hopefully this plays out during the season and throughout the tenure here.

Dan McCarney's first game was a 36-21 win over Ohio in 1995.

The Wyoming debacle was the season opener of his second year in 1996.

 

[Clark]

I agree with this assessment. My friends at the game kept asking why I didn't look happy. I expect the O to look better than they did. They just didn't look sharp. Timing of routes looked a bit off. The real positive I saw is we freqently got 4 or 5 yards on a first down carry. That is better than the 2nd and longs we seemed to have every time last season.

Offensively, the lack of timing can be expected since its the first game. That problem I wouldn't be too worried about because it will likely fix itself. The fact that ISU's o-line didn't dominate a FCS d-line might be a problem but sometimes o-lines need time to gel.

Defense is another story.

 

[Aclone]

My 2 cents:

Also, I highly doubt ISU was holding much back from their playbook. ISU was pretty lucky to have even been leading at halftime (the fumble by NDSU at their 1, non-review of ARob's fumble before AA's TD run).

Sorry, but that wasn't even worth two cents. What, you think Barney Cotton is still coaching? After the game, the guys on the radio agreed that three running plays were used all night--and what they were.

 

[isuno1fan]

My overall grade is a C-. Lots of room to improve. If we see improvement, this team can win 5-6 games. If not, we are looking at around 3 wins IMO.

 

[richey24]

They were definitely keeping a very tight playbook for this game, aside from the one end around pass, everything else was very vanilla.

 

[Al_4_State]

While I agree that Arnaud definitely had an off night, it's a luxury to call 16/28, 220 yards, 2 TD 0 INT, and 75 rushing yards an "off night".