Dirtydog Sports
Fort Worth Bowl
Fort Worth, Texas
Surface: Grass
CINCINNATI –2 over marshall
Thursday 12/23 6:30 pm est
2**Play Selection
“Value” clearly rests on the Cincy Bearcats in this match up as the last thing the public remembers about the Bearcats is the 70-7 pounding they absorbed at Louisville as 22.5 doggies back on November 27th, although the Bearcats probably would have still lost had Cincy QB Gino Guidugli played, the point is that he did not play in that embarrassing loss but will play in this affair.
Both teams enter this contest having identical 6-5 straight up records but Cincy is much stronger offensively than the thundering herd while marshall is slightly better in terms of overall defense than Cincy, however, good passing teams like these Bearcats have taken advantage of marshalls defensive secondary as evidenced by Bowling Greens 56-35 win over the herd.
Cincy rebounded from a 2-4 straight up and 1-5 ATS start to finish in a tie for second place in Conference USA by going 4-1 straight up and ATS coming down the stretch and are making their fourth bowl appearance in the past five years, however, most of the early problems the Bearcats had can be attributed to having to learn a new system under new HC Mark Dantonio.
The Bearcats have averaged over 400 total yards of offense per outing which has produced an average of 28 points per game and should be able to keep the herd’s defense honest with a rushing attack that averages 184 yards per game with a per pop average of 5.1 yards.
These two teams last met in the 2000 Motor City Bowl with the Cincy Bearcats losing by the final of 25-14 as 2.5 doggies, however, the herd still had the services of QB Byron Leftwich in that contest and Leftwich has since gone on to QB the NFL Jags.
As mentioned above the Bearcats are now led by HC Mark Dantonio who was the defensive coordinator at Ohio State the previous three seasons prior to taking over as HC of these Bearcats, Dantonio designed the defense which led to the Buckeyes National Championship win over Miami and it only makes sense that given the extra time to prepare for this Bowl game that he will have prepared his team very well.
The thundering herd stumbled badly coming down the stretch in posting a mark of 2-2 straight up and 0-4 ATS and over their final seven games of the season posted a less than stellar mark of 1-6 ATS, Bowling Green was the only Bowl bound team the herd faced during this span and BG blew them out by the final of 56-35.
KEY STAT:
The difference in this contest will boil down to the senior leadership that the Cincy Bearcats have under center in QB Gino Guidugli who owns all of the Bearcat passing records, this year Guidugli has averaged 240 passing yards per game with a 61% completion rate and has an outstanding TD to INT ratio of 24 to 7 which ranks him 16th nationally.
In comparison herd QB Stan Hill is not in Gino Guidugli’s class, Hill is not a bad QB overall but he tends to get into trouble forcing the ball into tight spots as evidenced by his TD to INT ratio of 17 to 14, the herd will be without the services of senior LB Dionte Wilson who was suspended, this will hurt the herd as Wilson was fourth on the team in tackles and will be replaced by sophomore Matt Couch…the kicker is that Couch has been missing practice time with a bad shoulder.