TicketsBy Bill Koch
GoBEARCATS.com
CINCINNATI – Getting to sleep Saturday and Sunday night was a challenge for University of Cincinnati football coach Luke Fickell.
After watching his team surrender a UC record 569 rushing yards to Navy in a 42-32 loss in Annapolis, "I kept waking up those couple of nights seeing guys running down the sidelines on the field with two guys out there," he said. "It's not very settling. I thought I had better balance. I thought I had maybe a little bit more maturity" to put the game behind him and move on.
"It was as humbling an experience as I've had," Fickell said.
But by Tuesday afternoon when he met the media for his weekly press conference, Fickell was feeling more upbeat after extrapolating the positives from the loss and was looking forward to Saturday's non-conference game against Marshall at Nippert Stadium, which will be UC's first home game since the Aug. 31 opener vs. Austin Peay.
And while it's understandable that Fickell, a former Ohio State defensive coordinator, had a tough time watching his defense get treated so shabbily by the Midshipmen, in the big picture the Bearcats probably are right where most objective observers thought they would be after four games – 2-2 with road losses to Michigan and Navy, and a road win at rival Miami to go with the season-opening win over Austin Peay.
Granted, the Bearcats needed a miracle finish to get past Miami, but still they did what they had to do. And now as they look at the rest of the schedule they can see a lot of potentially winnable games.
That doesn't mean Fickell is happy with a 2-2 start. Far from it. No self-respecting head coach is foolish enough to express satisfaction with such a mediocre start. Fickell is no exception.
"I'm never satisfied with where we are," he said. "I live in a bubble under a rock with a lot of the things that we do. The biggest thing is changing the expectation and changing the mindset (here), so nobody's happy with where they are, nobody's satisfied with where they are.
"But when you dive down into it, there's a lot of positive things we can take from last week and make sure the guys understand the progress we're making in the things we're doing. But where we are and what's the record, that's not what we expect, not what we want."
Fickell was so restless Saturday and Sunday nights because he wasn't able to shrug off the beating his defense took by rationalizing that everyone struggles to stop the run against Navy's triple-option offense. He thought he had prepared his team to put up a better showing than that. Seeing that he hadn't was hard to accept.
"The mentality of not being satisfied is a very tough mentality to always have," he said. "Unfortunately it started at a very young age. It wasn't something that just developed in the last couple of years or when I got into coaching. I think that was something that was bred in me unfortunately from when I was four or five years old when I started wrestling."
That's right, the unbeaten, three-time Ohio wrestling champion in high school, started wrestling when he was four or five years old.
"I had a crazy family," he said. "There wasn't a whole lot of other things to do."
But that same mentality, as misery-inducing as it can be sometimes, is what motivates Fickell "to continue to push our guys."
UC's quickest route to a full recovery, of course, is a victory over Marshall, which is 2-1, with a win at Miami (31-26), a loss at NC State (37-20) and a win at home vs. Kent State. The Thundering Herd had a bye last week.
The Bearcats will move forward with an offense that last weekend produced a season-high 439 yards against Navy. Junior quarterback Hayden Moore had easily his best game of the season and one of the best of his career, passing for 381 yards with two touchdown passes and no interceptions. For the first time in four games, the Bearcats threw the ball down the field with consistent success.
And Fickell continues to be impressed by redshirt freshman running back Gerrid Doaks, who gained 49 yards on 14 carries in his second straight start in place of the injured Mike Boone.
The UC coach said he liked "Gerrid Doaks' ability to continue to generate momentum, the way he plays the game, the way he carries the football, the way he blocks, the way he just goes about his business in everything he does. There's a lot of positives we can take from that."
Boone is expected to practice this week, but it's not a sure thing that he will go back into the starting lineup right away, even if he's physically able.
"We're excited about the guys that have been playing there," Fickell said. "Mike's status is still up in the air. We'll run him around a little bit this week and see if he can get out there and give us an opportunity to be better. If he can't give us a chance to be better than what we've got in there, we've got to be smart with him."
Obviously, the defense needs to do a better job of stopping the run, but the good news for the Bearcats is that they don't have to face Navy again unless they would meet in the conference championship game.
That's probably not likely. And even if did happen, it might mean another long day and more sleepless nights for Fickell. But it would also mean that the Bearcats had pulled off a remarkable turnaround in one year. Admittedly, that's just idle speculation at this point, based on a few glimmers of hope extracted from an otherwise humbling loss.
But perhaps it's not wise to sell Fickell short. Remember this is a guy who started wrestling when he was four or five years old.
Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years – 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer – before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January, 2015.
GoBEARCATS.com
CINCINNATI – Getting to sleep Saturday and Sunday night was a challenge for University of Cincinnati football coach Luke Fickell.
After watching his team surrender a UC record 569 rushing yards to Navy in a 42-32 loss in Annapolis, "I kept waking up those couple of nights seeing guys running down the sidelines on the field with two guys out there," he said. "It's not very settling. I thought I had better balance. I thought I had maybe a little bit more maturity" to put the game behind him and move on.
"It was as humbling an experience as I've had," Fickell said.
But by Tuesday afternoon when he met the media for his weekly press conference, Fickell was feeling more upbeat after extrapolating the positives from the loss and was looking forward to Saturday's non-conference game against Marshall at Nippert Stadium, which will be UC's first home game since the Aug. 31 opener vs. Austin Peay.
And while it's understandable that Fickell, a former Ohio State defensive coordinator, had a tough time watching his defense get treated so shabbily by the Midshipmen, in the big picture the Bearcats probably are right where most objective observers thought they would be after four games – 2-2 with road losses to Michigan and Navy, and a road win at rival Miami to go with the season-opening win over Austin Peay.
Granted, the Bearcats needed a miracle finish to get past Miami, but still they did what they had to do. And now as they look at the rest of the schedule they can see a lot of potentially winnable games.
That doesn't mean Fickell is happy with a 2-2 start. Far from it. No self-respecting head coach is foolish enough to express satisfaction with such a mediocre start. Fickell is no exception.
"I'm never satisfied with where we are," he said. "I live in a bubble under a rock with a lot of the things that we do. The biggest thing is changing the expectation and changing the mindset (here), so nobody's happy with where they are, nobody's satisfied with where they are.
"But when you dive down into it, there's a lot of positive things we can take from last week and make sure the guys understand the progress we're making in the things we're doing. But where we are and what's the record, that's not what we expect, not what we want."
Fickell was so restless Saturday and Sunday nights because he wasn't able to shrug off the beating his defense took by rationalizing that everyone struggles to stop the run against Navy's triple-option offense. He thought he had prepared his team to put up a better showing than that. Seeing that he hadn't was hard to accept.
"The mentality of not being satisfied is a very tough mentality to always have," he said. "Unfortunately it started at a very young age. It wasn't something that just developed in the last couple of years or when I got into coaching. I think that was something that was bred in me unfortunately from when I was four or five years old when I started wrestling."
That's right, the unbeaten, three-time Ohio wrestling champion in high school, started wrestling when he was four or five years old.
"I had a crazy family," he said. "There wasn't a whole lot of other things to do."
But that same mentality, as misery-inducing as it can be sometimes, is what motivates Fickell "to continue to push our guys."
UC's quickest route to a full recovery, of course, is a victory over Marshall, which is 2-1, with a win at Miami (31-26), a loss at NC State (37-20) and a win at home vs. Kent State. The Thundering Herd had a bye last week.
The Bearcats will move forward with an offense that last weekend produced a season-high 439 yards against Navy. Junior quarterback Hayden Moore had easily his best game of the season and one of the best of his career, passing for 381 yards with two touchdown passes and no interceptions. For the first time in four games, the Bearcats threw the ball down the field with consistent success.
And Fickell continues to be impressed by redshirt freshman running back Gerrid Doaks, who gained 49 yards on 14 carries in his second straight start in place of the injured Mike Boone.
The UC coach said he liked "Gerrid Doaks' ability to continue to generate momentum, the way he plays the game, the way he carries the football, the way he blocks, the way he just goes about his business in everything he does. There's a lot of positives we can take from that."
Boone is expected to practice this week, but it's not a sure thing that he will go back into the starting lineup right away, even if he's physically able.
"We're excited about the guys that have been playing there," Fickell said. "Mike's status is still up in the air. We'll run him around a little bit this week and see if he can get out there and give us an opportunity to be better. If he can't give us a chance to be better than what we've got in there, we've got to be smart with him."
Obviously, the defense needs to do a better job of stopping the run, but the good news for the Bearcats is that they don't have to face Navy again unless they would meet in the conference championship game.
That's probably not likely. And even if did happen, it might mean another long day and more sleepless nights for Fickell. But it would also mean that the Bearcats had pulled off a remarkable turnaround in one year. Admittedly, that's just idle speculation at this point, based on a few glimmers of hope extracted from an otherwise humbling loss.
But perhaps it's not wise to sell Fickell short. Remember this is a guy who started wrestling when he was four or five years old.
Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years – 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer – before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January, 2015.