[NU Sports] Par for the course ...

[SjT (Stephen J. Truog)]

Good to see the Cats crushing the Wolverines tonight on the Big Ten Network.

It's important because it keeps us "par for the course" in the league. Our losses have been to the ranked "big names" and the wins have been over teams we SHOULD beat.

Nothing wrong with "par for the course" - remember that this was the primary reason Joe Tiller made such a run at Purdue. He never lost to a team the Boilers SHOULD have beaten in that run. He never beat the big boys until late in their run, but winning the "gottawin" games is a big first step towards building a winner.

The bad news is that the Big Ten has a lot of ranked "big boys" this year and we have Wisky and Minny next. It'd be nice to get a win against one of those ranked teams to help our case.

The good news is that midway through the season, it looks like we got a pretty nice schedule by playing OSU and Purdoo - the league's top two teams at this point - only once. But we need an upset or two.

The biggest stretch of our season, however, is in February when we play five of those "gottawins" in a row. We absolutely MUST beat Michigan, Iowa and Indiana again and sweep our personal nemesis from Happy Valley to have any realistic dreams of March. Gotta win the gottawins.

But for tonight, a nice and enjoyable win. Good to see us not just winning these winnable games with IU, Iowa and Michigan, but winning them handily. It shows we're not losing focus on the non-ranked games and we'll need that for that big five-game stretch in February.

GO CATS!!! Close out this one and then get ready for the first half of the border war Sunday by beating the Badgers. Mmmmm, cheese! :)

GO CATS!!!
-SjT



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STEPHEN J. TRUOG
sjtruog at yahoo.com
GO CATS!!! GEAUX SAINTS!!!
Super Bowl XLIV Champions!
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