[NU Sports] At the half ...

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

Lots of thoughts about coaching this week ...

* Fitz and his staff really did a nice job with the mental aspect of the game this week - the Cats were injured and down, but came out fired-up and focused. Nice prep on the emotional side.

* Similarly, I'd already write in Brewster for coach of the year nationally - his team has a total attitude adjustment from last year - they're aggressive, confident, enthusiastic and playing well together.

As for our coordinators ...

* DC: Excellent gameplan and pressure this game to keep Minny out of its rhythm and shut down Decker. Keep up the pressure! Wootten is playing like a star more each week and you can tell he loves this system.

* OC: Mixed bag here - I think he finally has the QB he likes more in Kafka since he can put more running in there for the QB, but he still doesn't know how to use Conteh. The options have been disasters and big losses - RUN UP THE GUT WITH CONTEH!

And I LOVED the aggressiveness early (the deep TD on 3rd and short), but after that we really went conservative. Any time we'd get into 2nd and long we'd go into our shell and have two short running plays next. We had a 10-0 lead and could have extended it before the Gophers woke up but if we'd get stuffed on first down, we all but punted right away.

Gotta admit that it's better than I expected to be tied at the half - and even after we blew the early lead, it was nice to see us score to answer Minny when they seized the momentum from the INT. Dunno if we can hang in there for another half, but still nice to see us answer from that Indiana disaster last week. Keep fighting in there, Cats!

GO CATS!!!
-SjT

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STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!!