FAU loses tough game to Ohio
From David Volz
Florida Atlantic University played hard, but the Owls were unable to come up with a win against Ohio University and lost 17 to 10.
The game was delayed because of the weather and when it got underway, it was a long and hard struggle for both teams.
Neither team scored in the first quarter. The Owls got on the board first in the second quarter when Logan Lupo kicked a 37 yard field goal.
Then FAU’s Jarron Morris had an interception and ran it back 72 yards for the Owls’ only touchdown. Carter Davis kicked the extra point.
Ohio came back late in the second quarter as quarterback Kurtis Roarke threw pass to Will Kacmarek for a 13 year touchdown play. G. Spetic kicked the extra point.
O’Shaun Allison scored a touchdown for Ohio on a five yard run in the third quarter. A.Kasee made the extra point kick. In the fourth quarter Kasee kicked a 39 yard field goal.
Lajohntay Wester made a strong final effort for the Owls by returning a put to the Ohio 42 yard line. The Owls got the ball the 26 yard line but a final pass was incomplete as time ran out.
Head Coach Tom Herman said, “Maybe one of the weirdest games I have been apart. I told the team at halftime with a smile on my face up 10-7 that there is not a team in the country that can beat two teams in one night and we were trying to do that the entire half and a lot of times in the second half. In the first half, we had two personal fouls, two facemasks, targeting, four drops and 11 yards rushing. As bad as of a night as we had in the first half, we were still in the lead thanks very much in part to the defense and the effort they showed. The thing that sticks out as well it should is how poorly we played offensively. I told our team that I still believe. I have been doing this a long time and our best is really good. For whatever reason, I don’t know if we have to change the way we handle rain delays, if I have to change the approach with the team. We try to tell them all week that as pleased as we were with the outcome of Monmouth, we knew we had work to do and we knew that the competition level was going to ratchet up significantly…I do think we are talented enough. As I told the team, we are a work in progress. Every one of our long-term goals is still out there…We will lick our wounds tonight, bright and early tomorrow we will figure out what went wrong and how to adjust. At the end of the day, it is not about plays, it is about the way that we play under pressure. That is my main task this week, to get guys to understand that all you have to do is play the way you are coached to play with fanatical effort and the technique that you are coached to do. We are talented enough to do it, but there are times out there where it is chaos.. We will go to the ends of the earth to figure out why that is, but I am confident that we will have learned the lessons that are presented to us tonight and learn because of it.”
Quarterback Casey Thompson said, “We knew Ohio was going to be physical. We knew they were going to be well-coached and sound. That is exactly what they were tonight. They started to present a few different looks that we were not necessarily game planning for. Teams are really smart when they gameplan us because what they show on film is not exactly how they are going to play because they know the weapons that we have at receiver…Overall, we just have to play better. That starts with me at quarterback. We have to run the ball and get a run game going and then in the passing game, we just have to clean up a little bit of details, whether that is an incompletion, accuracy issues, or a dropped pass here or there.”
Linebacker Eddie Williams said, “We lost, so we have to get in the lab and fix our mistakes. We have to start faster…Any loss is a hard pill to swallow. Tomorrow, we have practice, corrections, get better at the stuff we messed up on. Every day we just want to get better and come out with a ‘W’, of course.”FAU is now 1-1 going into a game with nationally ranked Clemson next week.
