UW-Marshall halftime thoughts

Similar halftime score to last week, similar feeling of disappointment, but we ended the first half much better than last week.

What an atrocious start, absolutely embarrassing. Give credit to The Marshalls (what Will has been calling them), they played well, but we were awful. Four penalties in the first six minutes. Failure by the defense to get off the field on third down. Little aggression or precision on offense.

At one point I wrote down "Each play is worse than the last." Then things got better.

-How is their big stiff tight end consistently open? We had struggles keeping up with Akron's tight end last week.

-The first holding call on Maurice Moore was borderline, and helped kill some momentum for us early.

-Niles Brinkley subbed in for Mario Goins at corner and seemed to play better.

-Nice half by Lance Kendricks. Maybe he breaks out a year earlier than I've predicted. (BTW, someone tell Travis Beckum to stop running up and down the sideline so much -- he's sitting out to rest his hamstring, right?) They've done a nice job containing Garrett Graham.

-Allan Evridge wasn't all that sharp on our last touchdown drive, the guys were just extremely wide open. Still, he got the ball where it needed to go. His first pass to Kendricks was very nice.

-The defense has to make a big play here. The pass rush is pressuring this Cann guy, but no sacks.

-Marshall has some great names. Darius Passmore? Best name ever for a wide receiver. Chubb Small? Perfect name for a rapper, or for a guy who got beat up a lot in high school.

-Wanted to point our Andy Kemp and John Moffitt pulling on short-yardage plays again, what a nice dimension to have. Chris Pressley threw a nice block in space on Zach Brown's touchdown run.

-Rough first half for red Big Ten teams against green visiting teams --Ohio State losing to Ohio at halftime? They'll still win by 40.