[NU Sports] No one talking basketball

Tue Jan 5 11:55:33 CST 2010

If you will indulge one of my "other team" stories:

My son David played Greensboro College (NC) - the Pride - for 4 years. His junior year, they had absolutely no kicking game. They barely punted the ball, and forget field goals. They did make most of their extra points, but even defensive linemen can do those.

During the off season the head coach of the Pride found a guy who was a kicking instructor, I think he even had an organization of kicking coaches in North Carolina, but in any case, he took over working with the kicking game at Greensboro.

Those kids busted their butts - during early warm-ups, before anyone else was on the field, they were kicking into the wind, starting at the 20 and going back 10, then 5 yards until they couldn't get the ball thru the uprights. When it came time for a field goal, they made most of them (there were 3 kickers who all worked out together).

They even perfected a kick to the wing on an onside kick. They would kick it exactly 10 yards to one of the ends on the kick-off line, no ball bouncing off the ground, or big pile of players - Greensboro players would catch the ball in the air exactly 10 yards down field and they did it at least twice at home one season.

I don't remember this guy's name - I think if you look up Kicking Coaches in NC he'd pop out - but we sent our High School's kicker down to one of his camps before his senior year, and he came back with about 20 more yards on his field goal range.

The moral of this story is that we have several place kickers on the team who had to have been pretty good in high school (Demos was Mr. Automatic) but who probably have picked up doubts in their ability, hitches in their kicks, and who knows what else. I would hope that NU has a guy who knows kicking (we have 2 entire teams made up of soccer kickers working out on the lakefront every day) who could jump in and work with these guys to build their confidence back up.

Everything about Fitz' sideline technique screams confidence building. He demonstrably pumps up his players all thru the game, it is just our kicking game that seems to be shaky and without confidence.

I'm no expert in kicking, but it sure seems that however we're working up our placekickers, all the way back to RW, the plan doesn't seem to work in the big games. Demos used to be a guy who never missed - maybe we can return him to that guy from Scottsdale?

rsl  

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-----Original Message-----
From: nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com [mailto:nwu-sports-bounces at tssi.com] On Behalf Of cherron604 at aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 05, 2010 12:27 PM
To: bwdolphin146 at yahoo.com; nwu-sports at tssi.com
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] No one talking basketball

In my humble opinion,

We need a guy kicking off who can put the ball in or through the end zone often.  Auburn had that, we didn't.

We need a punter who can consistently kick them high and long, and drop them near the coffin corner to limit the return guys options

We need a backup kicker who has at least kicked field goals or extra points, so that if something happens to our starter, we have a believable option coming off the bench.  Against Auburn, nobody believed that our backup was even a legitimate kicker.

I do wish we would win another bowl game someday, but that is mostly selfishness.  As a group, what do we think of the 'Bowl game win drought', other than the fact that it is an easily quoted number on ESPN, and allows anchors and analysts short on insight and/or analysis to quote something that makes them sound clever ? 

a) I don't think any potential recruits care - the fact that we have been to 7 bowls in the last 14 years (5 of them very competitive, exciting games) is or should be far more important to them than the fact
 that we have ended up on the short end of them lately.

b) We care as fans because we have watched or attended the 7 bowls, and we naturally prefer winning to losing, but the value of bowls (it seems to me) consists of added practices, greater program visibility (recruiting and attendance), a treat for the players, and a chance to go someplace warm for the fans, and we are (it seems to me) reaping these benefits.  Have we lost any recruits due to losing Bowl games ?

c) This whole thing we have been doing is a journey.  First we had to learn to look respectable in games, then we had to start winning games.  Then we had to start winning conference games.  Finally we had to start putting together winning seasons, then winning conference titles (our three titles since 95 are still the moments that give me gooseflesh).  From that we have moved to playing in bowls.  Soon we will learn to win most of them (like Penn State does), then it will be time to learn how to compete for National Championships.  It's a difficult journey, and not everybody can complete that journey, but we need a special kind of coach, special assistants, and very special kids.  It would appear that we are progressing well in this journey, but we are not 100% there yet.

Anyone who understands facts would see clearly that the '61 year bowl game win drought' is fairly meaningless, since for 26 of those years (49 to 75), only 1 team, the conference champion, got to play in a bowl.  And for 8 of those years (73-80, very conservatively), we weren't even attempting to win football games, much less bowl games.  So a more meaningful stat is that we have gone to bowls in 4 of the last seven seasons, losing those games, on average, by 6.5 points.

I am already looking forward to fall 2010, and seeing what we can manage next season.

Chuck Herron   Tech '85 

-----Original Message-----
From: bwdolphin146 at yahoo.com
To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
Sent: Sun, Jan 3, 2010 1:30 am
Subject: [NU Sports] No one talking basketball

... Thank goodness. 
I was at a 2003 (I think) game against Wisconsin when the fumblerooski Fg worked 
or a key score and the Bucky fan I was with was yelling "Fake!" from the outset 
not that that helped any) so perhaps it is easy to spot. 
I still agree with going for the win, though. 
To my mind the biggest thing about next year is eliminating the need this year's 
eam had to get (at the least) 10-14 points behind before starting to play (PSU 
nd Wisky the exceptions). We were exceedingly fortunate to beat Purdue, 
ndiana, and Iowa after double-digit deficits and we lost to Syracuse and Auburn 
ecause we fell behind early. That has to stop. 
My second worry is special teams and no one who watched the Outback Bowl could 
isagree.  
Third is who replaces McManis, to my mind the biggest defensive playmaker at NU 
ince Fitz. 
Brad Wilson
ent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®
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