Azusa Pacific

After the loss to Humboldt, the coaching staff met for almost an hour after the game. Personally, I'm looking really hard in the mirror trying to figure out what it is that I'm doing wrong. I always look at myself first before moving onto the situation at hand. It was a very frustrating and emotional meeting. I won't disclose too much about some of the things that occurred in the meeting, but I am glad that things got resolved and worked themselves out.

Looking onto Azusa, we changed our whole game strategy and planned this game differently. Personal changes were made and took a step back from running a high tempo offense. We just didn't have the correct personal in to execute what we wanted and after losing our starting right guard and running back, we needed to make some changes. The first change we made was at the quarterback position. We went with Ben Longshore. He gave us the passing game that we struggled to put together in the past 3 games. Although Ben didn't give us the versatility in the run game, he brought a different dynamic in the pass. He was the most accurate of the quarterbacks and gave us exactly what we needed in the pass game. By going with Ben we had to slow things down. We huddled up instead of running no huddle giving us a chance to break down the defensive front  and allowing our young offensive line to adjust to the game. We also had new two new guards in so trying to find a rhythm and unity among the front five was going to be the task at hand. This would also help slow down the game and give our defense the rest they needed.

We had a strong game plan and it showed in our first drive. We went down the field and scored on our first drive. Going against one of the top offenses in the nation because of their run game, we knew we needed to match them drive for drive. If they scored on drive, we had to answer and score as well. We kept up the pace and tempo through the first half matching them drive for drive and scoring on all three of our drives. The score was 21 to 20 going into half time. We missed a crucial extra point on the third touchdown but the momentum was ours. We did everything we could as a couching staff to keep the guys energy levels high and try and sustain what we built in the first half. But things took a dive for worst.

It was our ball at half time and we knew we needed to score coming out to keep the momentum going. But the thing that kept us from winning so far this year came out to bite us again and halt us from scoring on our first drive, ourselves. Turnovers, missed opportunities and  key penalties halted our momentum and kept us scoreless after a field goal in the third quarter. We lost a game again that we should have won. The final score of the game would be 42 to 23. Back to the drawing board.