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Monarchs Monarch Nation, the Monarchists are back to recap, coastal Carolina and Old Dominion and preview that game against that school on the other side of the state. We are the monarchist. I'm here. I'm Mike. I'm here with Gary and Aaron. How y'all doing fellas?
Woo. I'm doing great, man. I mean, obviously we are upset last night, you know, following. The end of the football game, but today we've just had him, you know, a really nice few hours with two championships. Who would those championships be? Gary?
I'm going to throw a pause on thinking about the football game yesterday and say, congratulations to ODU Field Hockey winning the Big East Championship will not be denied by the NCAA Tournament Committee this year. Liberty fans and their bloodbath bullshit can suck it. And then also, just a few moments ago, ODU Women's Soccer wins their third straight conference title, beating JMU.
Putting the paws on football, I'm pretty freaking pumped for both of those programs and everything they've gone through this year to get some conference titles and go dancing. Even
better, that's two straight. Over JMU. Two straight conference titles over James Madison. Feels pretty sweet.
Something their football team is not allowed to do.
You know what's even sweeter about both these is both teams went down a goal early and they fought back. Field hockey scored three. Unanswered goals to win three to one and then women's soccer scored two goals, which is hard to do You know a lot of times you don't when you have teams that are this good You don't have a lot of goals scored so to be able to kind of you know, soak it in regroup And then pull together what the team's been working on all season.
But Angie and Andrew have done with those teams. I know that these wins are sweet. You know, the field hockey won over that up north in Lynchburg. And then, um, there's no love lost there at all. And of course, JMU. I mean, we don't hate that school, but we love to beat them.
Two defensive minded teams getting victory when it matters the most. That is. That is awesome. I'm incredibly happy for both of those programs today.
I feel like for Andrew, this is going to be kind of a get over the hump situation. He's had that team playing very well for the majority of his tenure here. And they finally break through to the NCAA tournament. I think a lot more to follow with this team in the coming
years. It is. Yeah, I mean, they beat UConn, who was a huge thorn in their side for a long time, and the team they beat today is ranked number six. I mean, they had to win to get in the tournament and they beat a very, very good team to do so. So, congratulations to Both teams, I believe that the women's field hockey team will learn tonight at 10 p. m. When and where they'll be playing in the first round of the NCAA tournament. And, and this is awesome.
Hopefully it's close and we can get there to support them.
Absolutely. Congratulations to both ODU Women's Soccer and ODU Field Hockey on their championships. We're stoked to see it. But we are here to talk All Dominion football. All Dominion loses 28 24 in a heartbreaker, giving up a touchdown with about 23 seconds to go to lose the game. There's a lot to talk about in this game. Where do you guys want to start?
I think we've just got to talk about not being able to finish games and hold on to a lead. I mean, this is the third time we've dealt with this season. Fun, not so fun fact, ODU's three biggest leads of the season have all been in games we've lost. With Marshall, Wake and now Coastal Carolina, 17, 16 and 15 point leads that we have not been able to hold on to. Um, I don't think I'm stretching to say that, like, this team does not know how to play with a lead.
They don't know how to put games away. And it's, it's really hurting us again here in a game that we absolutely needed to win at home for what we wanted to do
moving forward.
Yeah, not only have we not learned to do that, I know we've asked this in post game pressers and talking with Ricky, I know Mike has asked it before, and talking about time of possession, and how it's ultimately, I know the responses that we've gotten is ultimately it's not as important as some people make it out to be, but 넣고 serviceichen, or maybe We consistently end up on the short end of the stick and oftentimes very significantly on the short end of the stick for time and possession and
that wears on the defense. I mean some of these leads that we gave up were earlier in the season. This one obviously last night and I don't know the number exactly but I think That we were on defense for what? About 35 minutes of the game. We had the ball for maybe 22 23. I can't remember. But between injuries and just teams being defense being tired, that's got to be a significant Aspect of some of these.
I don't know if collapse is the right word, but not being able to hold on if the offense can't have sustained drives and the defense is getting on the field more often. It's just it's kind of the cracks just end up opening up wide. So,
in the 1st half coastal had no issue moving the ball. The difference was our defense was able to step up in the red zone and gets impactful stops. I think that time possession did take plates toll because the fourth quarter, those red zone possessions, they had no issue scoring on us. And that's the difference between being fresh and being tired. And it definitely caught up to him yesterday. Yeah, it
was also the way that Coastal was moving the ball too. I mean, they were able to run on us at will 278 yards on the ground. It's 299 if you take out sack yardage and a lot of that was from the quarterback position. We, we. kind of showed that we're susceptible to the quarterback running the ball, similar in the way that cam Fancher at Marshall was able to move around a lot in the pocket, make some runs, make some big plays, just not enough pressure.
And we never had a solve for Ethan Vasco running the football. He's a great athlete. I mean, If you know the history of Ethan Vasco in Old Dominion, there's a reason why we recruited him here. Lost him in the 11th to, to an offer from Kansas to have a P5 opportunity. Uh, you know, transfers to Coastal Carolina to, to get some NIL money. I think a lot of people were surprised that he actually started the game yesterday. I think, I thought, you know, Jared Guest had played well against Marshall.
They're clearly Coastal knew what they were doing to put him out there because we rarely had much of an answer to stop him, especially in the running game.
Yeah, I mean, he ran all over us, 183 yards, averaged 8. 1 yards per carry. I mean, it was clearly not good. I mean, he, I guess he didn't single handedly win that game for them, but pretty damn close. Not necessarily through the air either. We have got to figure out how to stop him, because if we want any chance to make a bowl game... We've got a couple more games we have to win, and we've got other quarterbacks that are on our future schedule that can run the ball as well as Vasco.
Including this week, Gaten Salter is a very talented runner. I will note, Gary mentioned the 15 point lead that lasted all of 20 seconds, and that's because Ethan Vasco broke one for 75 yards. Yeah, yesterday sucked. I don't know any nice way to say it. Yeah, we've
been a team that I feel like can absorb the first punch. Even going to JMU, we lost that game, but they would punch us in the mouth and we'd be able to answer with a counter punch. We did that with AP, we did it with Louisiana, we've done it a lot. We have not yet or yet to recover from when we punch a team in the mouth and they punch back. We just kind of to melt a little bit. So it's we can take a punch, but we can't take the counter punch.
And that that's what I feel like happened yesterday when Ethan Vasco busted that one for 75 yards. I just, that bad feeling creeped in and that bad feeling was served correctly. I mean, we still, we came down, we got the field goal to go ahead, but I don't think anyone was very comfortable sitting on the sideline with a three point lead and that much time left. And Aaron, you
were talking about time possession. So it was 34 to 26 and all of the lopsidedness happened in the first half. Which is those long drives that kind of led to nothing other than a couple field goals. And that's when our defenses kind of, they really bowed up in the first half to come through and keep the game close. The second half though, we played even with them on time of possession. And that's because third quarter we kind of dominated and they dominated the fourth
quarter. Get it. But that time of possession, I would equate that to if you're a boxing fan or an MMA fan of body blows. I mean, there are continuous body blows that add up. At some point, you can't take anymore. They just wear you down. And at this point in the season, I mean, you guys know better than me. You have it up. I do not at the moment. But we haven't had a single game where we won possession. Time of possession.
And if we were to add all of them up, I mean, and say how many minutes on both sides, what the net is, it's gotta be the length of a football game.
And with the way our offense works, and the way our defense works combined, I don't think we're ever going to see us win time possession. That bend on break
style. Yeah, I didn't say win time in possession, but it's gotta be a little bit closer. That, we've gotta have, instead of a 15 point lead, we have to have a 30 point lead. I mean, technically
this is one of our best time possession games all season. With 26 minutes, well, it says a lot for this season,
the last couple of games, we've been trending better to more even time of possession, but more importantly, like balance in plays, cutting coast only had 10 more plays than we did, but there's a big difference between dependent, like defending more past plays versus more run plays where you're running around a lot. I mean, a lot of those run plays that Vasco had or Beasley had for coastal. I mean, we were.
They're basically like two plays with the amount of time that we're running and how much contact you had to make. And you started seeing that wear down of arm tackles that they were breaking. And then more importantly, you saw injuries start to pile up. And that was my fear early in this season. We're looking at time of possession, like in the short term, you have two or three games where you get dominated. And that way you can get past it, but we're in the home stretch.
Now dudes have been banged up for a while. I mean, we saw. You know, E. J. Green. We know he's out for the year. Sean Asbury was banged up before the game, ended up in the tent, didn't come back out. I mean, we've Maury Morrison did not play. We're missing some dudes on the defense just from wear and tear. If nothing else,
we saw Keyshawn wicks go out on crutches at the end of the game. And when coastal really started having success at getting to our quarterback, we saw the offensive line kind of getting nicked up. I mean, Santana had to pick himself up on the ground. I mean, these guys were fighting, you know, pulling themselves off the ground. Clearly they were hobbled. If we had more depth, we were able to, you know, kind of get there.
But clearly they gave everything that they had and they were fighting, fighting, but those body blows just added up. And, you know, it became much easier for Coastal's, you know, D line that To make an impact there and really make it hard for Grant. I will say
the sacks came late, came on throws that we were obviously going for deeper balls. We kind of went away with what was working on those shorter throws. I'm not sure why we did because it was working all game long and we started taking more deep shots and the longer you drop back, you're gonna give them more opportunity to get that sack. But both those late sacks Our O Line got wrecked. I think almost every guy on the line got beat on those plays. Yeah, they
were a couple in the fourth quarter when Coastal really brought a lot of pressure where there were three, four, five guys getting on Grant before he could even finish his drop back, nevermind his reads. And, you know, we had some shakeup on the offensive line. Um, I, I don't know why Xavier Black missed the game. Possibly he could have gotten injured in warmups, but I don't know the exact reason why. Um, so Leroy Thomas moves over to center and Elijah Hoskins. Comes in a left guard for ODU.
And I think they did well with the run concepts and run schemes to, to get the ball down the field. Um, but when Coastal knew it was a passing down or thought it was a passing down, they rolled up some pressure. Offensive line scares me. And I think why it scares me is that we went out and we got a lot of guys in the transfer portal this off season, some big dudes that we thought had a lot of potential that we were excited about that really chased in the portal.
And then you have one offensive line starter go down and the person that comes in to replace them is the walk on offensive lineman. It's not the dozen guys that are on the sideline that are big and highly touted that we thought would be able to play.
It's the walk on and that just screams to me that we have a major problem with Talent evaluation and depth on the offensive line if we're bringing those guys in and we can't even get them in when we absolutely need to Like I'm hoping Hutt with a full normal offseason is able to correct some of those issues But I mean a lot of big names on that sideline were watching that play while there was a walk on in there at left guard Yeah, I feel
confident that they'll get that soft Gary the three of us were talking about that yesterday at the game You know, they'll be coach Decker's and coach Hutts real First opportunity to kind of have their guys that they're recruiting. They're looking at, and even in the portal, cause what, you know, where they got here to make an impact where guys see the offense that we're running, see that the.
This offense, with the addition of some key pieces, especially on the offensive line, they can make a huge impact from day one. There's opportunities from day one to really blow up. And, I mean, if you're able to kind of stock that cupboard a little bit. Then this season could look a whole lot different. Unfortunately, those guys are just coming in this year and they're kind of working with the groceries that were on the shelf. So I think that the potential is certainly there.
Yeah. I think what Gary was kind of going towards is maybe there was some guys that we gave scholarships to out of desperation versus that's who we really need in the building. I don't know. We're not at practices, so it's kind of hard to know what the difference is between one player and the next. But that's got to be a concern. I thought Obi Sani maybe played his best game yesterday. I was really impressed by some of his runs. Uh, Wicks was obviously great until... He was down.
That's a tough loss to take with how great he's been all season. Would have been really nice to have him in the fourth quarter. But, the question I think most ODU fans are asking is, where was
Callaway? Yeah, I mean, we saw him on the sideline. He was dressed out. Omori Morrison was also dressed out on the sideline. You know, I don't know if it's an injury and they wanted to bluff, or I think if you watched JMU. There may have been some misreads and things like that of opportunities where Callaway may have taken the right block and gone for a lot longer. I would hope that we're not holding someone out just because they're in the doghouse for a couple misreads or something like that.
Um, but it would have been nice to just have that one two punch, especially when Wicks went out. But yeah, credit to Obisany. I thought he played really well, had good vision, was very patient to let some things develop and go down the field. Another injury that hit us that I think has been the most underrated Person in our run unit is Jalen Butler. He caught that kind of jump shot pass from Grant Wilson, got us a first down, grabbing his shoulder, went right into the tent off the field.
He has been such a key piece of our run game this year. He has played so well and done some amazing things. Had that incredible two point conversion catch a couple of games ago. He went out, you could feel it. You could feel that there was a difference there with what we were able to do from the run game. But yeah, I mean. Injuries pile up and we've got to be able to adjust and do things, but we can't leave weapons on the sideline at key moments.
You know, we had another couple injuries, at least. Appear to be that we haven't talked about yet. We had a different punter yesterday. So Ethan Dwayne was dressed also, but he appeared to have a small limp and we did not see him kicking, even though he was out on the field, uh, he was kind of practicing timing. So I'm thinking that he was nicked up. He has been hit.
Really hard a couple times recently during games and then we saw Ethan Sanchez taking kickoffs And I think that's the first time that we've seen him do it this year or at least for an entire game I
think he he kicked maybe the first game and then Rigby came in after that but Sanchez came in He put a drove a couple through the back of the end zone I thought kick coverage other than I think one where they advance the ball past the 25 kick coverage is better Punk coverage was better and man Shout out to Brant coming in and punting under heat, under pressure, and absolutely booming some shots down the field. Uh, so it's nice to, it's good to have one punter.
It's even better to have two that can come and sub in. But you know, we lost the game yesterday, which is a game we should not have lost. Um, we absolutely should have won that game, had so many chances to win it. Uh, but I think the impacts of this game extend beyond just losing it. With the guys that we lost to injury, I'm hopeful that they're able to come back.
We get some more bodies in for Liberty, but, um, it's tough to lose some of the guys that we lost, uh, yesterday and continue on with basically need to win two out of our final three to make a bowl. Yeah.
Grant Wilson. I thought he played another pretty good game. 16 and 28, 172 yards, three touchdowns. He ran the ball probably his best since Virginia tech 13 carries for 66 yards. He didn't take 24 on sacks, but that is not 100 percent on him. I thought he played great again. So, a couple throws he probably wants back. And I know there's a couple receivers that want a couple throws back. Another shot at catches. Namely, Dom Dutton on that long touchdown pass he should have had.
Off of his shoulder
pads, we'll say, being on the near the sideline like we were when Dutton dropped that pass, you know, he was upset. He threw his helmet. He was mad. But I really like to see Coach Ronnie go right over to him and talk to him. And then in addition to that, all of the wide receivers that were on the bench came right over to Dutton, pumping him up, showing that they had his back, and then. Later on in the game, Dutton's able to catch a touchdown pass and kind of get that redemption there.
So I was glad to see those guys go pick him up. I was glad to see coach Ronnie go talk to him. Um, I just, that was really big from like seeing the culture and action a little bit of picking guys up after that. Cause he's been a weapon for us all season. I mean, Second drive of the game. He goes streak and pass at the corners. Only option is to go and tackle him, get to PI. Otherwise it would have been sick. So, uh, glad to see him get his, get his head back, right.
With some help from coaching and teammates and go back out there and catch a touchdown pass. Not too long. And I want to
give credit to Terry Jones for picking up the helmet and going up and trying to console Dom when he was so upset about that miscatch. And while we're on the topic of guys who played well. Jason Henderson does it again. He actually breaks his own record. 22 tackles on the night. What can we say about Jason that we haven't said before? He's everywhere. He is our defense. He's our leader. He's just spectacular. 22 tackles. One and a half sacks. Three tackles for a lost.
And so many crucial plays in that game where he made just the perfect tackle and the perfect play. Yeah, I
also want to shout out Wayne Matthews. I thought he had a fantastic game as a linebacker position. He ended up with 14 total tackles. Terry Jones ended up with 13 and he forced the fumble. But, Marcus Knight. We got to talk about Marcus Knight a little bit. Doesn't play a whole lot. He probably has the best, like, high impact plays to snap rate in the entire country because he had that return at JMU.
And then he gets a circus interception on Coastal's first drive at the game that I think really changed the momentum early on for us. You know, A lot of guys on the defense were doing well, you know, Sean Asbury goes out with an injury, you know, Mario Thompson ended up getting some time in at linebacker. We had a lot of guys just kind of. Kind of step up there. Mario easterly moved into that safety spot too for a little bit.
He's what 24 now yeah, there's definitely some highlights from the defense, but No one could just put the right hit on vasco except for jason henderson He had an amazing sack of vasco and I thought vasco was going to get away. Um, but man, we just I think it's fundamentally, we have some issues on defense with our approach to stopping mobile quarterbacks.
There was a lot of arm tackling going on early on in place and a lot of over pursuing where we're just taking bad angles. I know it's important to go fast, but sometimes being in control is more important. And I think that's something that needs to be talked about inside of our defensive locker room.
They were able to eat us up a little bit when we were using the three man front, which you've kind of gone to primarily this year. If you've got a three man front and you're in man, you can do a lot of things to get the quarterback, a lot of running room. And it seemed like close. So it was preying on that a little bit where there just was nobody in the second level that would stop, you know, an eight to 10 yard rush.
It's tough on those front three, like I think we have good defensive linemen, but they're all getting double teamed. You're basically rushing three against five offensive linemen and either a tight end or running back who's blocking. And if you're not going to be a first, second, third round draft pick in the NFL as a defensive lineman, you're not going to very frequently beat a double team. I just continue to kind of wonder at what point do we throw a fourth defensive lineman up there.
It made a lot of sense early when we had E. J. Green, Jason Henderson and Wayne Matthews. Like that is a damn good three linebacker set that you want to get on the field. And E. J. Green was so good in that bandit position with the way he played. Like he's the perfect bandit for us. I mean it stinks that he got hurt. But I think you've got to change some things up there because we can't get pressure with three.
We are not able to stop the run with a three man front and Liberty is looking at that film and just licking their chops because they love to run the ball. They love to run with the quarterback and I just worry about our ability to continue to throw Jason Henderson up there for 20 plus tackles and expect him to stay whole throughout this season. Well, I think
something's got to change. I mean, the three quarterbacks that we have left on the, you know, on the schedule all can run the ball. They're all very capable. We, you know, Mike mentioned Salter. We know about Granger. I'm looking up Bryn here from Georgia Southern. Looks like, you know, he could be really dangerous at times. So do we just keep doing the same thing here? Do we have to keep doing the same thing? I don't know.
You know, at this point in the season, you know, with those losses, do our coaches have the flexibility to try to do something else? You guys would know better than me, but I mean, it seems like we're going to find ourselves in the same position the next three games. I
think it's a lack of defensive tackle depth. I'm not sure if we have the personnel to run four men on the line like we'd like to, because, I mean, we're subbing in two defensive tackles, essentially just swapping them back and forth throughout the game. If we had four defensive tackles that could play, maybe we would see four men on the line, but that's a recruiting issue.
Transfer portal issue two. We lost a couple guys off the defensive line late in the portal process. One, I don't know if he's seen any snaps at Colorado. We have some other ones that I don't think are playing either. But I do think that there's a pretty good chance we get a Maury Morrison back for the Liberty game. And that will be a huge boost on the defensive line to get a guy like that back. I think he was pretty close to being able to play on Saturday. He was suited up.
But he did not see the field as far as I know and I remember. If we're able to get him back, that's a big push because he is that guy that can beat double teams or at least eat some more blockers and you can bring those late blitzes. But I mean, it's just tough. Um, and when we're able to kind of give it the offense three to five yards every single play, just based on where we are schematically,
sorry, I'm looking at Jason's year, year long stats. He's had 141 tackles now.
Yeah, he could definitely break that record. I do want to shout out, use defensive staff for a really heads up important play at the end of the first half. Coastal's driving. We're up seven to three and coastal calls a timeout out of the timeout. They go and sub one, another wide receiver in with 10 seconds on the play clock, and I don't know if it was Ironski or who, what. Position coach on the sideline. It was, but somebody shoved a player out there and said, go sub in.
And because coastal sub so late, we were able to sub, we were allowed to sub cause to delay a game and coastal was only able to get a field goal before halftime, that was a super heads up play. By our coaching staff, uh, to keep us in the lead going into halftime. I just want to shout that out of, that's really smart to see that receiver run on and go make that sub. That was
awesome. We were talking about at the time. I mean, you guys saw it really quickly. And I mean, we were like little school girls. We were so giddy cause we knew they weren't going to get it off.
Yeah. That, that was huge for that. Made it a lot easier on our defense on that third down.
I'm just thinking about all game long They really had no problem running on us and it's really that defensive line issue I'm, not sure what the answer really is there other than you mentioned the portal I mentioned recruiting I kind of see it as the same thing you have to recruit your players that you have on your team And you got to recruit talent in and it's a very tough balancing act This thought for a second.
We have very special guests Angie Hand of Old Dominion Women's Soccer, she just coached Old Dominion to their third straight conference tournament championship. Welcome to the show, Angie.
Hello. Hello. Hello, Mr. Angie.
Hey, Angie. Thank you for joining us. Congratulations.
No problem. You've got me for about 90 seconds.
All right, Gary. Go. Well,
Coach. Go. Yeah, Coach. Coach, congrats on the win. Tell us a little bit about what that was like there in overtime and getting that clutch goal at the end.
Yeah. Oh, it was immense. I mean, we, they scored first and we, we had to, we You play three games in five days, which is quite frankly ridiculous for the game of soccer at this level. But we have to dig that out. And when you go down a goal, the last thing, it's really the last thing you want. 'cause you want, you wanna go ahead. But we go down a goal, we have to move things around a little bit. We have to dig deep in the squad and edgy comes up with big time goal to tie the game.
I thought we looked stronger going into overtime. I thought we were trying to steal it the last five minutes. Then we go into overtime and, you know, I've said all year, the depth of our squad is what can make us special if we can get it right. And we have one of our freshmen who's playing in the left back, outside back position. Hits all the way down the line, cuts inside and hits a world beater. You just, things that dreams are made
of, you know? Yeah, we were all watching it here before we were getting ready to record and we were losing our minds when that goal went in. So happy to see freshmen do that and just the toughness of this team to bounce back after going down 1 0. Three straight conference titles in a row, Conference USA, two in the Sun Belt. Is it fair for us to say the dynasty is here for ODU women's soccer?
Well, don't start. Just because we play in Hudson Blue, don't think it's going to quickly flip to Carolina Blue. I'm not getting above myself, that is for sure. We're nowhere near them yet, but we're just delighted. I mean, everyone's banded this word three peat a bit for a year. For me and for our team, we've just put it behind us, you know, and just focus and getting better every day. And, uh, I'm just immensely proud of this group. They're just phenomenal young women.
Yeah. Well, Monarch nation is definitely proud of you. Yeah. Yeah. Enjoy the night. We can't wait to buy more gear and more rings for your team this year. So, uh, congratulations. And thanks so much for hopping on for a few minutes for us. Go enjoy it. Oh, great.
Thank you guys so much for thinking of us and thanks for your support.
Go Monarchs!
Go Monarchs! Go
Monarchs! What a treat that was. Angie Hine joins us live after her championship. That was fantastic. That was so
awesome. That was cool. On the fly.
So cool.
Let's go Monarchs. But that's... Yeah. Alright. So, where were we?
What I think we should talk about the one of our last drives of the game when we got the field goal to go ahead 24 21 coastal comes down the field, scores a touchdown, gets the two point conversion to tie the game. Our offense gets the ball and it seems like we've got a good drive going. We're moving the ball down the field with some passes a great run from OB. Sonny, we get. Definitely into to field goal range, a little over two minutes left.
And I know there's a lot of questions on clock management there and play calling and things like that. Uh, although it's you guys, you know, where, what do you think went down in that final few minutes before we kicked that Ethan Sanchez field goal to take the lead?
Well. This is probably the one thing that we've either gotten DMs, talked to people after the game, or we've seen on social medias. The fans have been super critical about that first to last drive, the last real drive, in You know, wanting us to run the ball, force Coastal to burn their timeouts. But we've talked about this together. I mean, it's, this is a debatable topic.
Do you run the ball and you kind of force them to burn those timeouts, but they're still going to have, I mean, assuming you just run the ball, you know, up the middle, they're going to get the ball back. I know that Ricky and coach deck are looking at getting the first down and just. Winning this game, whether it's scoring a touchdown or leaving no time left on the clock, you kind of, you got to get a first down there either way, whether you run for it, you throw for it.
We had the opportunity to do that. We had a play that we didn't make, unfortunately, and it didn't work out. We have to put points on the board there, and so you have a coaching decision to make, and at a certain point to go, What do we value more? Do we value more of the opportunity to run some extra time, or do we value the opportunity to, you know, Put some points up and the way that it ended up falling is we got to third and long.
That's when we end up running the ball because we wanted to make sure that we didn't lose any more yardage. We didn't take a sack that takes us out of field goal range and then we give the ball back to Coastal with unfortunately enough time to win the game.
So that first down, first and ten from the 26, we try to throw a short pass page. I think that would be considered a drop. If he catches that, this is not a discussion right now. We're second and five, we probably run it. And then we run it again if we don't get the first down. If we get the first down, we're really in business, right? But it all really comes down to that first play where he drops it. It changes the whole dynamics of what this discussion really
is. The only way that we were going to be able to run the clock out or all the way down is if we got a first down. So. I know there's a lot of question about Why did we pass the ball in the first two downs of that drive? Those pop screens have been good for us. They're basically have operated as runs for most of the season. If that ball is caught and we're looking at probably seven, eight, nine yards, then yeah, we're going to run it.
But Regardless, like Coastal had all three timeouts, they could have run those. They didn't end up needing those timeouts on their next drive. Like they called one almost to like, okay, we're easy field goal range. We're going to call a timeout and drop a play to go get a touchdown. They, that part didn't really matter that much. We needed to get a first down. And I like the idea of our coaching staff being aggressive and trying to go get that first down. We just, we didn't execute it.
Um, you know, second down the line completely collapsed. And Obi Sani made a humongous heads up play to come back towards Grant Wilson and be in the area for him to throw the ball away because Grant had gotten pushed so far back by the rush that if he doesn't throw it away and if he takes the sack there, we're out of field range and now we're going for it on fourth down.
With the game tied, uh, so I, we have to get the first down that's plain and simple and not getting the first down is why Coastal had the time. It wasn't because we called two pass plays.
Yeah. I know in the past there's been games where they've been criticized for being too conservative and then now we take chances and now you slam them for that. If you're going to slam them for being too conservative, you got to give them a little bit of credit here for taking a chance to end the game. And
it was a smart pass play to like, it wasn't trying to throw the ball deep downfield. It wasn't like a low percentage long bomb. It was the pop screen that we really didn't run until that drive. It's what got us so many yards of JMU. It was a low risk throw. It just didn't get caught. And I mean, shit happens on that, but yeah, if we have that catch. We're very setting up what a second in two second in one, just based on where they were, we run for the first down. We kick it at the final second.
But either way, you have to have a first down there to run the clock out and not leave coastal more than like a minute. Otherwise, even if they call their timeouts, we run up the middle, we kick the field goal. They still have the same amount of time to go down the field and score the touchdown, which they end up doing. And then we got the ball back and actually had a chance of 26 seconds.
Alright, well, I'm kind of over this game. I'd like to talk about Toys for Tots and then move on to the next week. I want to first start off by thanking the Marine Corps, Old Dominion, ODAF, and all of our fans for taking part in this and making it a special day and a very successful collection. We don't have the numbers yet, but just based on how we filled one and a half AAVs with toys, We filled two sheriff's vehicles and a pickup truck with toys, and I know those ammo cans were full of cash.
So I think we did a fantastic job. I want to thank everyone involved. On behalf of the Monarchists, it was, it's really special to see the outpouring of support for Toys for Tots each year. And it's one of my favorite games we have all season because of that.
Yeah. In addition to all the folks that you just mentioned that really help make this possible, we also want to extend our thanks to Mark Davis and Scott Jackson for letting us come on their platforms and spread the word to folks that might not ordinarily, you know, be on social or see us, uh, being able to be on the TV and be on sports radio, the flagship appear in Hampton Roads as. Big thank yous to both those guys.
Yeah, shout out to Footers for catering our tailgate, uh, feeding some Marines and a bunch of Monarchs over there in the blue lot. Uh, brought home a little bit that will be my dinner this evening. So thank you, Footers, for the food. Uh, and everybody else who was involved coordinating a pretty massive effort there on Saturday. And
the flyover, uh, it was fantastic. It's always great to see a flyover over Ballard. But 2F18s, it was just not much cooler than you can get than 2F18s. That was
awesome. Yeah, shout out to vfa106 a base here at nas ocean and virginia beach All
right, that kind of rips the band aid off of yesterday. We leave on a good note now It's on to that team on from lynchburg. What do you got gary?
Well, honestly, it's hard to get a read on Liberty because their schedule this season has been softer than baby shit. But you do have to give them credit at some point because they've won every single game and only a couple of them have really been close, you know, looking at the stats for them, uh, they run the ball a lot. 68 percent of their plays are runs. That's fourth most in college football.
And they're averaging 5. 8 yards a rush, which is the fifth best, uh, in college football, they lead the country with 283 yards on average per game on the ground. Uh, when they do pass, they're pretty efficient. Um, they're getting about 10 yards per pass, which is fourth in, in college football. Uh, they're really able to kind of enforce their will. I think a lot of the reason that they run the ball so much as they've been in a lot of games where they have been up quite a bit.
You know, They're a fairly complete team, you know, It's just tough to kind of get a read on them because, you know, they're not playing really high level competition, so it's hard to get a read on how good they are. They really haven't faced much in terms of adversity this year, but we know that they have talent. We know their quarterback, Caden Salt, is really good. He's super mobile. In my opinion, he's definitely better than Vasco and Vasco absolutely gashed us on Saturday.
So, it's going to be a tough road challenge, missing some key guys, but it's a game that we have to win if we want even a chance at bowl eligibility. All right, Vegas
set the line at 13 and a half in Liberty's favor. The total is 57 and a half. Aaron, what is your initial thoughts on this team from
Lynchburg? I mean, that line seems fair based upon what kind of where we are at right now and kind of how we ended the game yesterday and what those injuries look like. I mean, we've got another mobile quarterback. If he has the success that Vasco had this past week, it could be a long day for us. I mean, it's another, it'd be another day where Jason has 25 tackles. And honestly, for us to be successful, we can't have a game where Jason has 25 tackles.
I mean, I love Jason, but if he's making that many tackles, you know, it probably means that things aren't going exactly the way that we want. Cadareus Calloway is, was hurt, but. Clearly, we need someone else to step up in the running game. You know, we have to be able to run the ball next week. And, you know, Keyshawn was out on crutches, so we don't know if he's going to be available. Now, Obi, look, he looked really nice at the opportunities he had.
He showed more explosion and bursts than we've had an opportunity to see before. But he can't do it all on his own. So whether Kadarius is the second guy, or whoever it is, we have to have at least one other guy step up. So, it's going to be a challenging game on the road. We know their fans can be a bit hyped, so, you know, it's going to be a place that is going to make some noise, and they're going to try to create a home field advantage. So, we can certainly win, but...
It's going to be a big challenge and think
defensively. We have to get after Cade on Salter. I mean, he's, they haven't thrown the ball a ton. He only has 192 passing attempts on the year, but he has 23 touchdowns and three interceptions. He's only taken eight sacks. He's good. And if you give him time, he's going to tear you apart. So we've got to bring pressure. We have to get to him, hit him, make him uncomfortable early and put them behind the sticks with timing on each drive.
And it would be really nice to make them one dimensional, force them to throw the football. And good God, if we get a lead, put the foot on the throat and finish the damn
job. So I'm looking at their stats. Kind of concerned about obviously Salter, but also they're running back Cooley. Uh, he's got over six yards of carry. Salter is over six yards of carry. We're going to need to stop the run here. Otherwise, it could be very similar to the Coastal game. As you said, Gary, gotta force them to pass, which is not exactly what you normally want to say here, but we want to force them. Yeah,
you're right, Mike. I mean, in addition to Cooley and Salter, if you just go down the list, Lucas is averaging 5. 4. Bedgoods averaging 7. 5 joiners. 5. 7. You go down the list. I mean, the team as a whole is averaging 5. 8 yards per carry.
They clearly have been able to run the ball, but you got to pick your poison here, and I agree with you guys, if you got to pick one, I'm picking selling out to stop the run and make salt or throw the ball either way, it's going to be a tough test if we managed to win this game, it's going to be a, an impressive victory based upon kind of how we limped.
You know, into the end of the game yesterday, hopefully, I know we've got a great training staff, and I'm sure that they've been working overtime already to get the team ready to field a good strong team with the ability to compete
next week. So, in the post game yesterday, Grant said he will be fine, but we saw him kind of bang his knee late in the game, and we all know as old men, an injury, it's not always the day that it hurts the most. Once that swelling starts, it can get a lot worse pretty quickly. Fingers crossed that Grant is 100 percent and there's nothing to worry about. But I think that's something we need to consider and have in the back of our heads as we go through this week and wait for this game to be
played. We need to find some more answers on the offensive line too, because the play where Grant first came up kind of gimpy was, I mean, just a jailbreak up front. And I know we talked about it last year with Hayden Wolfe when. You're getting pressured as a quarterback. You want it to come from the outside, so you still kind of maintain a pocket and can step up. But when the pressure is coming from your, the center and the guard positions, there's nothing you can really do there.
You almost have to become a running back and make someone miss before you can even get back to your reads or looking downfield. You know, Grant's taken an absolute beating this year. at the quarterback position. I think he is still played well, all things considered and how often he's been hit. But just like we talk about the defense being on the field too much and being involved in too much contact, making too many tackles that also applies to your quarterback quite a bit too.
So we're going to need to get real creative in our past blocking schemes. Like we've gotten creative in our run blocking schemes to give Grant some more time to make some plays downfield. Um, Liberty has a boatload of talent. You can, I'm sorry, that team in Lynchburg has a boatload of talent. You can beat me out there on that one. Because they can get guys into school there that you can't get into school at other places that have certain things in place.
And they've got a lot of talent on both sides of the football and it's gonna take a Herculean effort for us to go in to Lynchburg with that crowd and win. Alright,
Aaron. So, defensively we know, we're gonna try to force them to throw the ball. Make them one dimensional. Offensively, I think this is gonna end up being a shootout. But where do you think is the most important part for us?
That's a tough question, because I don't know what we're gonna have, offensively. We're not sure, like you said, Grant and the post game presser told us he's gonna be fine, but if he's not, you know, my guess is Jack is gonna be the guy, but If you've got an offensive line who is clearly hobbled, at least we were at the end of that game. Do you go with Jack who won it? I think we should
assume
the greatest plan since he said he would be.
Okay. Well, I mean, I mean, you asked me the question so.
No, we said defensively our whole goal was to maybe make them offensively. How are you attacking liver?
Well, that's where I was going with it, man. I mean, obviously I don't know who's gonna start it may have grant start What do we do? Do we have to assume that the offensive line is healed because they clearly weren't at the end of the game If they're not are we looking at what we saw at the end of the game?
or
You know, I have no clue. We're gonna have to be quick. We're gonna have to go back to that quick game that we abandoned kind of in the middle of the game because clearly we're not gonna have enough time to take A lot of deep shots. We'll have to pick our opportunities when those come up. I just, I'm very concerned about the health of our offensive line. And then even if Grant plays, he might be a little nicked up. I mean, we don't know if that was the cramp. We don't know if it was the knee.
Is he going to be less mobile than he has been? So it's going to be even harder to evade? I don't know. It's hard. It's hard to say. I mean, your guess is as good as mine. I don't know,
man. Looking at their defensive numbers, they're a very stout defensive team. I think the opportunities are going to come through the air for our offense. They're 92nd in the country in sacks, very similar numbers to Coastal. They're 74th in passing yards, 30th in rushing yards on defense, 65th for yards per play. They're really good on third down, or they're 59th, but they're pretty good on third down. And they turn over offenses a lot.
They're second in the country in defensive turnovers Is that a product of who they're playing or is that a product of how good their defense is? I guess we're going to find out on saturday But it looks like throwing on them is the way to beat them.
We find ourselves in a precarious You know situation if we depending upon our health, I mean and I haven't seen them play so Have they been susceptible to the deep ball? Or is it more of the quick game? If it's a deep ball, I know you said that they have not had much success getting pressure on the quarterback, but neither had Coastal until late
yesterday. Yeah, well they played on weekdays. Pretty much the whole month of October. And I got to catch a couple of their games. I think they struggled a little bit from a tackling perspective. Like, I don't think they gave up a lot of really big plays. They just didn't tackle exceptionally well in the secondary. And that maybe is where we can attack. If we can get them to the perimeter and get those pop screens is this quick screens. I will say.
We actually ran crossers off of that on a fourth down on Saturday, and I was really excited to see it. The wrong receiver was targeted, um, because the way the crossers were, Kelby Williams was coming from the home side to the visitor side, and both defenders got picked and followed the other one that we threw to. But if we hit Kelby Williams on that, that was six.
I think that's a way to attack it, but... I mean, we just have to establish some kind of identity on offense because we look like two different offenses going out there on Saturday. It was all right. We're gonna go and run all of this possession or we're gonna throw all of this possession and the ones where we were successful. It's where we mix and match and we just took what the defense gave us. We started losing that mentality a little bit against coastal when we got the lead and it killed us.
Like, I don't care if we're down by 20 or up by 20. If the defense is going to give you a five yard out, take the five yard out. If they, if they're going to crash on the running back quarterback keeper, go get five, six, seven yards. We just got away from that mentality when we got the lead and we've done that all season long. It just basic. Liberty is going to give you something because the way we stretch them out.
We have to just take what they give us and go down the field, eat, clock, and score touchdowns. Fairly simple, but to going up against a team I think is actually pretty good. Yeah, we got
our hands full, on the road, one o'clock game, in Lynchburg. 13 and a half. I mean, that's a big number. Yeah,
I think this is a huge gut check for our team. Like, are they buying into the culture that the coaching staff is putting forward? I feel like they have all year. Because we've had so many close games, they've continued to bounce back. This is a big test. If we go into, into that city out west, out south, and we get our doors blown off, I worry about what the next two games look like. Like, because we go in there and we can beat them. We have a chance.
With Georgia Southern on the road, Georgia State coming to Norfolk after a game at LSU. But can they rally, can they get their shit together and go win a non conference row game to give us a shot at bowl eligibility? How, how tough are you? Show us.
So we don't know what that locker room is like. We do know that Grant Wilson and Jason Henderson said all the right things. In the postgame interview yesterday, that one on mentality, it's really important to them, but how does that carry on to the last guy on the, in the locker room, we've seen it in years past where the culture wasn't right and how badly that can go. So, you're right. We're gonna see what this team is really made of this weekend.
Yeah, I mean, we've got a few games left to try to be bowl eligible. In my mind, I know, I'm gonna ask you guys what y'all think. And I know if we ask the coaching staff what they would tell us. But, you have, what do we have? Three games left. And we have to win two. Depending upon the health of the team, do, I mean, do you make every effort and roll guys out who say they're good but clearly are nicked up?
Yeah. In this game or if there's questions there and you do you decide to be more conservative, let guys get healthy and roll the dice on the last two games
of the season, you lost the luxury to potentially rest banged up guys against liberty by losing to coastal. If you win that game, I think it's actually smart to arrest some of your banged up guys and prep for Georgia Southern and Georgia State. But we're, we're backs against the wall now. I mean, if you think you're going to go to Georgia Southern and win that game and then come home and beat Georgia State to go six and six, that's it. Big gambling.
It's a bad eyes though in that one game parlay with 10 legs got about the same odds there. So you lost that ability to rest. I think when you lost the game in the coast of Carolina, you have to throw everything you can at that game and then hope you steal 1 of the next 2. I will say
Ricky early on when he got here, he put out a question to the team. Are you injured or are you hurt? There's obviously a big difference. Everyone is hurt at this point in the season. They're beat up. It's a long grueling season. Football takes its toll on everybody, but are you injured or are you hurt? Guys need to face reality and see if they're hurt or if they're actually injured. Hey, we are welcomed again by another guest. It's Andrew
Griffs from the Field Hockey. Hey, how are you? It's like on the bus.
Good, Andrew, how are you? I'm doing pretty fantastic.
Yeah. Congratulations on your championship. How does it feel to finally get over the hump and break through? Yeah,
it feels unbelievable and our team, the team this year has been the right team to do it. It's been a great team. I knew it from the start of preseason. I think I told Aaron when we were walking around the neighborhood, there's something special with this team and sure enough, it worked out that
way. Against a really, really tough opposition. Like, how awesome is it to bounce back from that to win 12 straight, and now you're going dancing?
Well, we,
uh, the teams we were playing at that time, I think they were all either ranked then or are now in the top six or seven in the country. And so we're playing some really tough opponents early, and that was for a reason so that we could, we could prepare ourselves for. Later on the season when things get tough and so we played we were real close. I mean we were Very even with duke. I lost one. Nothing. We went overtime with michigan Zero, it was zero zero. We lost one.
Oh Uh, North Carolina, we had a good chance to take that game. It was, it was a 2 1 game and Liberty was 1 0 right till the end. And obviously they've had a great season
going on. Going to the game today, you go down 1 0, you rally back and win the game. You know, what was kind of the mood on the sideline after you went down 1 0 and what kind of propelled this team to go and just hammer down the rest of the game? Yeah,
we, we just been consistent and we've been down in several games through the season and we've reacted really well and it's part of the strength of our team is the character of our team is that everyone, they stick together and we've got no one pulling in a different direction. We've got everyone staying together and so it was, it wasn't really a big worry, a goal on a third rebound that they scored. And so it wasn't anything we did wrong, it was just a couple of unlucky bounces.
So we stuck together and I mean, pretty immediate, and we'd been controlling the game up to that point. So we stuck together and pretty consistent with our play, and we started to get outcomes. And we started to get opportunities and corners, took advantage of them. And then I think the fact that we were controlling how the game was played, not only gave us confidence, but it also It gave them some concern and some doubt on their sidelines.
So you could tell that the momentum shifted and there was a feeling of, okay, this game's not going to be a comfortable game for them. And we were feeling really good about how we were playing. And we stuck to the game plan dead
on. Well, we were happy to see them get uncomfortable considering the opponent. But it definitely felt like when you tied the game. That they got nervous, they were playing a little bit tight, and you all just barreled down on it. You know.
I gotta ask about Marlon's goal, which was, I mean, a laser shot of a goal, just the fitting into what she may have been snubbed for, but offensively, you know, how did that rhythm feel going in later in the game to go get that second goal and then that third goal to really pull ahead? We were definitely happy to see it. Mike, Aaron, I don't know if you have any other questions, but I'm just.
Incredibly excited for your program, what you've been through this year and to come back and to beat the opponent you did to win the Big East. The tournament can't snub you this year, coach. Awesome. Share with the team. We're incredibly proud of them. We are so happy for their win. Enjoy it, relish in it, and you'll have a lot of monarchs behind you wherever you end up in the tournament, whoever you're playing. Good luck to them. They're going to need it. Awesome job, coach. Thank you so much.
Go Monarchs! That's awesome man, both of them called in. That
brings us to predictions. Aaron, as always, you get to lead off. Alright,
so this past week I broke from tradition, I said we were going to win by a touchdown or more, and ah boy did I screw the pooch. So, this week I go back to Old Faithful. It's going to be a really tough game, on the road, a few hours from here, against the team that I won't say the name of. The defense is going to figure it out, you know, it's Be able to bend, don't break, do just enough.
The offense, we're not really sure who's going to be there, but we're able to score points regardless with the one guy who's been super consistent lately is really coming into his own. Ethan Sanchez wins the game. 50 yard field goal. I love it, Aaron.
All right, Gary, what do you got? Well,
I mean, our backs are kind of against the wall here, and this is the first time we've been in this situation. I am going to bank on Liberty's schedule being incredibly soft, and us being the best team that they have faced so far this season. I think That the culture of this team, what Coach Ronnie has put into place, what Coach Decker, Coach Seiler has put into place, I think it resonates. I think this team is really pissed off that they've lost the last two games.
I think we go in to South Central Virginia, we go on that terrible field with their terrible fans, and we sneak this one out. By four. I got us to win this weekend. I think we can pull it off. ODU plus 13 and a half. Take it all day. This is going to be a one possession game that we win.
That is surprising that you went there, but I like it. I like it a lot, because I see this game as being another Caderius Calloway blockbuster. We didn't see him this week, so he's going to be fresh. He's going to be ready to roll. And I don't think they've seen a running back like Caderius Calloway, I'll say. Not uncommon to say. Because there's not many out in the country like him. So, he's going to be our MVP on Saturday. And we talked about gut check time.
I mean, this really is gut check time for this team. And seeing how angry and upset Jason Henderson was after that game, I know he's not going to let his teammates give up. So my faith is in Jason Henderson and Grant Wilson and this offense. Old Dominion wins. I'm not doing scores anymore. Just Old Dominion wins. Let's go.
I can't quit you
I love it, man. I love it All
right, take a page out of field hockey's book and go kick their ass.
Yes, sir. That's right Hey before you close it out like I don't think it's going to publish tomorrow morning But go to you basketball fans. You got an opportunity for two treats tomorrow The women play at 4 p. m at the ted and then the guys first game 7 p. m tomorrow night. So If you got season tickets, make sure you use them all. If you don't, buy them or roll up to the box office. And welcome back to TED. Uh, it's an exciting season of basketball right now. Yeah, I
can't wait to be back in the TED tomorrow. It's gonna be a fun one. Alright, that does it for us. We will be back next Monday. Go Monarchs! Go
Monarchs! Go Monarchs!
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