Week eight has arrived and finally Bowling Green is back home again after three straight road games.
They host the Akron Zips who come into this matchup with a 1-6 record (0-3 in Mid-American Conference play).
During the three-game road stint, Bowling Green went 2-1, with wins against Georgia Tech and Buffalo, while falling to Miami.
So being back in the Doyt, for head coach Scot Loeffler, couldn’t make him more excited.
“Yeah, it feels like an eternity, to be honest with you. I think we’re the only team in the country that had five road games out of seven weeks,” Loeffler said. “It’s really gonna be great for the players in terms of a rest time and we’ve been on a bus for six and half hours coming back from Buffalo, three and a half from Miami. Those are late nights that we’re getting in. We’re not playing at noon, we’re playing at 3:30. So those are tough and I’m thankful that we’re back at home it’s gonna be really important. This is a really important game to us and we need to make sure that the Doyt is packed.”
Akron is entering this game with a rough record, but Loeffler doesn’t want their record to fool fans.
“I know what a 1-6 team looks like in this league and we were my first two years here we were god-awful and we were 1-6 and 0-6, I know what that looks like and this Akron team doesn’t look like that at all,” Loeffler said. “You just watch their games and nothing on tape shows that they’re a 1-6 team. We’ve got our work cut out for us just like everyone in this league does and you better bring it, you better bring a great mindset, you better be consistent, you better protect the ball, you better find ways to get explosions, negate that as an explosion so the opponent if not, you’re gonna get your tail kicked in.”
Saturday’s game versus Buffalo saw the defense create five turnovers. For Loeffler, if the defense continues to get these kinds of takeaways, he believes they’ll win a lot of football games.
“I think our defense needs to continue to get the ball back and as soon as the offense can figure out how to protect the ball cleanly we’re gonna win a lot of games,” said Loeffler. “We need to continue pressuring the quarterback. We give our opponents a lot of different looks and hopefully, the quarterbacks keep throwing us the ball and we get the ball back protect it and if you win the turnover battle you’re gonna be in great shape.”
Loeffler praises the defensive takeaways but also talks about how giving up the ball is the next thing to focus on.
“It’s fascinating you know we’re the worst in the country and given the ball up in the best in the country of taking away. So we need to protect the ball better and if we do that we’ll be in great shape.” said Loeffler. “The frustrating piece of it is that we emphasize ball security around here probably as much as anyone in the country and we have set periods that we’re protecting the ball… we need to do a better job of protecting the football and a better job of getting the ball back or continue with what we’re doing with getting the ball back and it’ll be a key in these next couple games, particularly this one.”
Senior cornerback Davon Ferguson was a big part of the team’s takeaways on Saturday with two of his own.
Staying consistent and taking it week by week is what he and his teammate’s minds are saying they have to be set at.
“The players look at it just as much as the coaches look at it.=,” said Ferguson. “For us, it’s just making sure we stay consistent and the big thing is just being 1-0 each week, that’s the mindset for us.”
Ferguson also understands that every aspect of the game is important to the momentum of the game.
“It’s really important, from all aspects of the game. Offense, defense, special teams,” said Ferguson. “You saw special teams with the block and put up points on the board. Whenever you can change the momentum of the game and just continue to have success on defense special teams and even offense. As a collective that’s really the mindset.”
The mindset going into this week?
Confidence.
“Confidence especially for the offensive line because when we have a bad game like we did [Miami game] it hurts a little bit so we don’t want to let it happen again, especially when we see the quarterback get sacked,” said offensive lineman Alex Padgett. “We hate that, so I would say it really pushes us to do better, that’s why we have those bounce-back weeks. Run the ball again we’re pretty confident we could do a as long as we can, I just keep doing what you’re doing to our job same and it’ll be the same outcome.”
Safe to say Bowling Green is happy to be back playing at the Doyt.
Kickoff set between Bowling Green and Akron is at 2:00 p.m.
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