By: LARRY VAUGHT
Veteran Ohio University coach Frank Solich thinks one thing from his team’s 17-14 win over Kent State will translate well to facing Kentucky in Commonwealth Stadium Saturday afternoon.
“You do start to plan around the fact that there’s likely to be crowd noise and when you get to third-down situations, it certainly cranks up and so you have got to be prepared to handle the crowd noise, and there’s a couple different ways to be able to do that within a game so that the communication thing is the right one,” said Solich.
“One thing that I thought was tremendous by our football team was one penalty and that was on the offsides on a kickoff, so even though we were playing a bunch of young guys, guys really handled the atmosphere of the game and the situations very, very well. We just didn’t have penalties and that is a rarity for the first game. You’re probably more prone to penalties in the first game and so I couldn’t be more pleased with what we got done there.”
The Bobcats got a look at what UK’s offense will look like with quarterback Patrick Towles in UK’s 59-14 win over UT-Martin when Towles threw for 377 yards and one score and ran for another touchdown.
“Once you get into the season, you don’t have a lot of time to prepare for games. We have a fairly good idea of what they did last year and then you add this game into it,” Solich said. “They’re a multiple offense and so, in preparing for them, it’s not easy to do in a week’s time. They’ve shown both a really good ability to run the football as well as throw it and so they’re not a one-dimensional football team and so that always adds to the complexity of trying to slow a team down.”
“They took great care of the ball. Zero turnovers. They got five turnovers from Tennessee Martin, which in itself is the end of the game. There’s an awful lot to prepare for. They executed extremely well in their first ballgame, so it will be a matter of playing very, very well.
“We’re going to have to match up and physically play well. You can’t go in there standing around looking for things to happen. You got to go out and try to make things happen. We know what we’ve got to do to make this thing a ballgame and to have a shot to get it done. I like our team’s makeup. I think we’ll prepare well and we’ll see.”
Solich knows Kentucky defensive ends Bud Dupree and Za’Darius Smith can create problems for his offense that had four turnovers last week. The Bobcats did throw for 262 yards and run for 175 against Kent State.
“I think they had three sacks in the first game and those guys are big, physical athletic guys and you look across their front, it’s not a small football team that we’re facing,” Solich said. “They’ve recruited talent and so you know the line play is going to be instrumental in what gets done in this football game and they’ve got two really good ones in those guys and across the board, they’re strong.”
Ohio held Kent to just 31 rushing yards on 22 carries last week while UK ran for 234 yards, including touchdown jaunts of 73 and 43 yards by Braylon Heard.
“You don’t generally stop a team from moving the ball as well as we did on the ground without it involving everybody,” Solich said. “I think number one, it was good team defense and I still believe that we probably have more speed on this football team defensively than maybe any year here. Certainly, I don’t think there’s any year here we’ve been faster as a group of athletes.
“The fact that we’re so deep in the defensive line and we’re able to alternate guys in there all the time, you know I think the most reps that a defensive lineman got was thirty-some reps, where some of our lineman offensively got 68 reps. So, the fact that we’re able to keep talented fresh guys in there, I think paid off in that ball game and hopefully will pay off down the road.”
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