AKRON ' By the end of the first quarter at the Rubber Bowl last night Kalvin McRae had 87 yards and a touchdown. Ohio had outgained Akron 168 yards to 40, and despite a score tied at 10-10, the Bobcats appeared ready to force the ball down Akron's throat any way they could ' but then the bottom fell out.
McRae ran for only five yards in the second quarter as Ohio put up just 28 yards before the half. And as has often been the case, without a steady ground game, the Bobcats struggled to find any sort of offensive rhythm in last night's 48-37 loss.
They gave us a lot of movement and I don't know that we handled the movement great
coach Frank Solich said.
I don't think (McRae) had many creases with the opportunities he had as the game went on Solich said. We had some early plays there where we had two to three opportunities and I thought he made the most of those and then it was just tough going from that point on.
With Akron clogging up any and all running lanes, the Bobcats looked to their passing attack and Brad Bower who started against the Zips because Theo Scott was unable to play due to a pulled groin he suffered last Friday against Temple.
But a failure to convert on a third down ' Ohio was 5-of-16 ' combined with a handful of dropped passes on crucial plays kept the offense's effectiveness to a minimum, even though the Bobcats put up 359 yards by game's end.
There were key situations
there were third downs and things like that where we had the coverage we wanted. We had the routes we wanted to run
said Bower, who finished the game 17-of-37 passing with 239 yards, three touchdowns and three sacks. I just failed to deliver the ball to our playmakers.
All of the three touchdown drives Bower engineered came in the second half, with arguably the most impressive being an eight-play, 74-yard march downfield culminating with an 11-yard completion to Andrew Mooney that brought Ohio to within three points at 34-31. But in the long run, Bower said, late-game heroics mean little if they don't result in a win.
I just wasn't delivering the ball
Bower said. I felt myself not letting it rip basically. Finally in the third
fourth quarter I started to find it
feel it
but too much
too late.
