Cincinnati Sails To Win Over Nayy

 

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The Cincinnati Bearcats had to right the ship after a tough loss on the road to Central Florida last week. Who better for 'ship righting than the US Naval Academy Midshipmen, who was defeated 20-10.

The Bearcats showed problems finishing drives by settling for two field goals in the first quarter after driving inside the 20-yard line.

"We settked for two field goals early," quaterback Ben Bryant said.  "We should have scored touchdowns. Thet's something we have to keep working on."

Defensively the Bearcats shut down Navy, although they ran for 176 yards and chewed up 33 minutes.

Jawon Briggs blocked the Navy's first field goal attempt before the Acadamy kicked one through.  The Bearcats scored on 27 and 38 yard connections between Ben Bryant and Tyler Scott.  One in each half.

Navy put together a 75-yard drive that took 16 plays and 8:37 ro xomplwrw. Masaai Maynor scored from the one yard line on a fourth down play late in the third quarter. 

Navy runs the tripllp e option.  It is a running offense that uses a lot of the clock.  The Navy offense kept the at times expolsive Cincinnati offense on the sidelines.

To help prepare for Navy, coach Luke Ficckel, assembled a group last Sunday to similate the offense in practice.,

"I have to give credit to the group that came in on Sunday and gave us a great look.  Will Adams was our quarterback after we lost Kyle Bolden who ran it for us<" Fickel said. 

Bolden played at Colerain High School which ran that offense for years.  The Bearcat defense features five players from that school some of them ran the offense.

Dante Corleone, one of the Colerain quintuplets on defense made 11 tackles.  His high school experience gave him an advantage.

"It is such a unique thing to time up.  The most important thing was to give a shout out to them," Fickel said.

"When we prepared. We tryed to stay disciplined," Corleone said.  "It was awesome.  I went against that offense my whole life, my whole high school career.  It was a big whole high school career."

The Bearcats won their 31 straight home game. It is the second longest home streak after Clemson, who won 38 home games in a row.

The Bearcats had a winning streak within the conference broken at Central Florida last week. Fickel was slightly concerned how his team would recover from that "gut punch."

"Their backs were against the wall a little bit after what they went through last week," Fickel said. "Everybody goes through it but we haven't had to go through it as much.  You see what your team is like and what your leaders are like when you go through something like that."

The Bearcats have another one of them coming up on a short week.  They play East Carolina on Friday night with a 7-2 record, 4-1 in the All American Conference.