Archive For The “Brian Rock” Category
We break down the Holy Cross game – and we give our fearless prediction below the flip.
The old Forrest Gump saying that seems particularly apt about this matchup this weekend is: “Life is like a box of chocolates. You don’t know what you’re going to get.”
So as it goes with Holy Cross, whose offensive outputs in every game this year have been: 20, 20, 51, 26, 7, 36, 0, 7, 24, and 42.
Three games scoring less than 10 points; three games scoring more than 30 points, and four games scoring between 20 and 29 points – that defines inconsistency.
In their high-scoring games, the ingredient that has seemed to help Holy Cross score points in bunches are the same thing that helped Lehigh so much this week: turnovers.
In Holy Cross’ two most impressive wins – against New Hampshire and against Fordham – in both games, the sequence “Holy Cross touchdown, get ball back after a turnover, Holy Cross touchdown” played a huge part in their wins. Once they got up by two scores, it was a hill that neither opponent could climb.
It is that sequence, in my opinion, that needs to be avoided at all costs.
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Holy Cross’ and Lehigh’s paths to having fun playing football have been different, but two teams that appear to have reclaimed the fun to some degree will be facing off this weekend at Murray Goodman Stadium in an intriguing, important football game.
The 4-6 Crusaders have only one path to a Patriot League co-championship: beat 3-6 Lehigh this weekend, and hope 3-6 Lafayette and 5-4 Colgate lose at least one game the rest of the way.
But in Holy Cross’ regular-season finale, it doesn’t really feel like it’s about the postseason – which would only happen in the unlikely event of Lehigh and Holy Cross finishing at 4-2, and Lafayette and Colgate finishing at 3-3 in league play.
For Lehigh, though, the Patriot League Championship and the opportunity to play in the FCS Playoffs is still very much in play. Beat Holy Cross, and beat Lafayette in the 153rd meeting of The Rivalry, and this Mountain Hawk team will have a ring fitting in their future and a football practice on Thanksgiving.
And in a way, that’s what makes this game extra-dangerous for these Mountain Hawks. The Crusaders are nearing the likely finale of their roller-coaster ride. Lehigh’s 2017 coaster ride still has some very big twists and turns still in it.
Read more »
Holy Cross’ and Lehigh’s paths to having fun playing football have been different, but two teams that appear to have reclaimed the fun to some degree will be facing off this weekend at Murray Goodman Stadium in an intriguing, important football game.
The 4-6 Crusaders have only one path to a Patriot League co-championship: beat 3-6 Lehigh this weekend, and hope 3-6 Lafayette and 5-4 Colgate lose at least one game the rest of the way.
But in Holy Cross’ regular-season finale, it doesn’t really feel like it’s about the postseason – which would only happen in the unlikely event of Lehigh and Holy Cross finishing at 4-2, and Lafayette and Colgate finishing at 3-3 in league play.
For Lehigh, though, the Patriot League Championship and the opportunity to play in the FCS Playoffs is still very much in play. Beat Holy Cross, and beat Lafayette in the 153rd meeting of The Rivalry, and this Mountain Hawk team will have a ring fitting in their future and a football practice on Thanksgiving.
And in a way, that’s what makes this game extra-dangerous for these Mountain Hawks. The Crusaders are nearing the likely finale of their roller-coaster ride. Lehigh’s 2017 coaster ride still has some very big twists and turns still in it.
Read more »
It was clear that Holy Cross’ 32-0 loss to Yale wasn’t going to yield many highlights for their end-of-the-year DVD.
“We just couldn’t string anything together,” head coach Tom Gilmore said after the loss. “They got us on our heels. They were executing some big plays and it snowballed. Yale kept the pressure on and it one of those days we couldn’t flip the momentum.”
At 2-5, the Crusaders did, and still do, have a chance to win the Patriot League, if they win the rest of their games and Lafayette loses twice – certainly not an inconceivable notion.
Even so, Holy Cross athletic director Nathan Pine sent shockwaves through the Patriot League this weekend when he called head coach Tom Gilmore and told him that he was being terminated immediately, with Brian Rock, the team’s offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach, taking over in an interim basis.
“Traditionally I’m not a proponent of a mid-season change,” Pine told Jen Toland of The Worcester Telegram-Gazette, “but I’ve watched carefully, and especially over these last three weeks our team has seemed to spiral and our performance has gotten progressively worse and so I didn’t want to delay the decision any longer, because hopefully this can be a rallying point and a galvanizing moment for our team to still have some success at the end of the season. I just didn’t feel like that would happen if we didn’t have a significant change.”
The fall of this Holy Cross team and the circumstances that led to Gilmore’s firing was stunning.
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