Monday, September 6, 2010

Kent State at Boston College: Primer

Fresh off of BC’s much-expected win over Weber State on Saturday, the Eagles are 1-0 and looking to double their win total this weekend against the Kent State Golden Flashes. As you recall, the Eagles have played this team each of the last several years, registering comfortable wins each time.

The opening line for this ballgame is sitting at BC -17. Given how they just played, and how Kent State just played, that seems like a little too much confidence in the Eagles, but recent history would suggest that BC will win this game by about three or so scores, so I’m certainly not going to make an issue of it.  For reference, last year's BC/Kent State game had opening lines ranging from BC -17 to BC -20.5, with the line the day before the game at BC -21, so if you were wondering, BC -17, is pretty consistent with last time.

This is just another one of those games where we’ll have to deal with the lesser quality of the opponent and just watch BC rack up the points (I know, it’s so difficult watching BC win with ease). Anyway, I’ll spend this week breaking this game down, a game which I ranked 11th of 12 in difficulty earlier this year. It’s all FBS competition from here on out for the Eagles, and it’s just going to get harder from here.

Going into this week, following the lackluster effort against Weber State (yes, it is possible to win by 18 points and still have been lackluster), there will be a few big questions: (1) What will become of BC’s defensive line? (2) How about the secondary? (3) Will there ever be consistency at quarterback? All three of those units checked in as being deficient last week and hopefully they won’t be problems throughout the season. It may not be by a whole hell of a lot, but Kent State is a better team than Weber State, and like it or not, they’re BC’s dress rehearsal for Virginia Tech (with a bye in between). A good team on Saturday would have hung 40 on BC’s defense and capitalized more on Shinskie’s erratic play. Simply put, even though it’s Week 2 against another non-conference opponent, they’re going to have to play better this week. Not that I think they’re in real danger of losing, but two uninspiring games in a row with the next being against a top-ten opponent is like heading into a buzzsaw crotch-first.

Kent State, for their part, beat Murray State by a margin by which BC should have beaten Weber State (31 points). Over the course of the next few days, you’ll see that they’re not a bad bunch.

Tomorrow, a comparison of the two offenses, based largely off of what we saw last week (and just a little of last year’s stats).

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