You likely have heard already, but Utah State will be playing Toledo in the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl. The Rockets produced the nation's 28th best offense and the 105th ranked defense when it comes to total yards. The Aggies on the other hand rank 26th in offense and 15th in defense.
In other words, USU has plenty more than just a slight edge in the yardage numbers.
We'll talk plenty more about this in the next week and a half though.
ALL-WAC TEAMS RELEASED
Utah State lands 14 players on this year's All-WAC teams, with eight of them making their way onto the first team. Gary Andersen was also named as the WAC's Coach of the Year.
First team
OT - Eric Schultz
C - Tyler Larsen
RB - Kerwynn Williams
QB - Chuckie Keeton
DE - Al Lapuaho
LB - Jake Doughty
LB - Kyler Fackrell
CB - Will Davis
Second team
WR - Matt Austin
OG - Jamie Markosian
DE - Jordan Nielsen
LB - Zach Vigil
CB - Nevin Lawson
S - McKade Brady
A FEW THOUGHTS ON ALL-WAC...
You kind of have to just expect the WAC to totally mess up a few things in whatever they do these days, and this is no different.
First thing: Colby Cameron as the Offensive Player of the Year... The WAC dun goofed on this one. Yeah, I get that Cameron has put up some crazy awesome offensive numbers, but so could a lot of quarterbacks on good teams who stay in the entire game to run up the score on teams. Can you imagine how insane Chuckie Keeton's numbers would be if the playbook was kept wide open all game, with CK still on the field late against the likes of UTSA, Texas State, New Mexico State and Southern Utah? Not to mention Cameron pretty much fell flat in La Tech's two biggest WAC games. Keeton was exceptional in those big WAC games.
The WAC set somewhat of a precedent last year for team success being a factor in the postseason awards when they tabbed Adrien Cole as last year's Defensive Player of the Year over Bobby Wagner. They didn't keep it consistent this year. The team that dominated conference play didn't have either one of the POY awards, and that just isn't right. Keeton should have been the Offensive Player of the Year without question.
When it comes to overall selections, San Jose State led everyone with 16 guys getting picked. Both the Spartans and Bulldogs had nine selections to the first team, while USU only had eight first-teamers and 14 total selections. Dafuq is up with that??
Travis Johnson deserved Defensive POY, so no complaints there. How a guy like Bojay Filimoeatu gets left off of both teams is a mindf*** though. Kellen Bartlett should have easily occupied that second-team tight end spot over Chase Harper too.
Kellen and Bojay still have a trophy to show for this season at least. Still a bit of a bummer to see some deserving guys left out of the mix while the second place team gets two more guys earning all-WAC and the third place team has just as many as USU. I guess you could just say that's the WAC being wack...
Leave it to the WAC to do things the wrong way. Ready for the MWC!
ReplyDeleteI thought Kerwynn Williams was just as deserving as Chuckie for Offensive Player of the Year. He came up just short of the WAC record for most all purpose yards in a season for crying out loud! He would've got my vote.
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