Similar to this year's game against U of T, Queen's headed into this weekend's tilt with York knowing that it would be awfully hard to impress anyone against a winless team. Yet, the (potentially Golden again?) Gaels managed to find a way to look impressive, putting up a school-record 80 points against the hapless Lions while holding York off the board entirely.
According to Queen's Sport Information Officer Mike Grobe's release, the 80-0 win was also the biggest margin of victory ever recorded by a Gaels' football squad (the previous record was a 72-0 win over U of T in 2003) and the biggest margin of defeat ever experienced by a York football team (their previous low was a 90-15 loss to Wilfrid Laurier on October 19, 1974).
Most of the individual offensive statistics [OUA box score] are impressive on their own, despite head coach Pat Sheahan yanking the majority of his starters early in the third quarter. However, they look even better when you factor the number of attempts in. Dan Brannagan was 14 for 18 passing for 169 yards, with four touchdowns and no interceptions: that should boost his ranking in Rob's model a bit. Mike Giffin had his third game of the season with 200-plus rushing yards (204 on 19 carries) and chipped in three rushing touchdowns, while Scott Valberg caught seven passes for 168 yards and four touchdowns.
The defensive performance was also pretty impressive: the team yardage numbers aren't up yet [CIS box score], but the passing numbers on the OUA site have York's quarterbacks combining to go five-for-25 for 42 yards and their running backs rushing for a combined 27 yards on 14 carries. Those are some pretty incredible stats.
It's certainly important to keep the euphoria in check. After all, York was 0-5 going into this one, and they've looked like the worst team in the country for most of the year. An impressive performance like this isn't entirely meaningless either, though, and it's probably good for the Queen's offence to put up some big numbers after they were largely shut down last week against Western.
The No. 7 Ottawa Gee-Gees will pose a bigger challenge next week, but they're enduring some hard times at the moment: their 22-21 loss [OUA box score] to Laurier today demonstrated the inconsistency they've shown for most of the season, and might just knock them out of the top-10 entirely.
If Ottawa rolls over against Queen's again next week, the Gaels' closing game against Waterloo means they won't face a stiff challenge until the playoffs, which could be dangerous and produce some overconfidence. Sheahan's kept his team focused and motivated so far: we'll see if he can do it down the stretch.
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9 comments:
I wouldn't worry about the overconfidence...
I htink everyone has learned from last years mistakes. The mentality around the team has changed bigtime.
I don't think Queen's has anything to worry about against Ottawa.
Last week, the Gee-Gees fall behind Windsor 37-3 in the 2nd quarter and lose 40-28 to the Lancers.
This week, that same Lancer team got scalped 58-5 by Western.
Once again, Ottawa loses to a team it really shouldn't have lost to.
But Josh Sacobie again had a rather poor outing and was outshone by his Laurier counterpart.
And stupid coaching decisions once again haunted Ottawa.
Leading 14-2 with around a minute or so to play and the wind at their back, Piche opts to gamble on third down on his side of mid-field.
It was less than a yard, but intead of a qb keeper, Sacobie gives the ball on a hand off five yards behind the line of scrimmage and Mason got stuffed.
Laurier winds up scoring and its 14-9 at the half.
The intelligent call would have been to punt and preserve the 12 point lead going into halftime, but Piche and intelligent calls don't go together in the same sentence.
Ottawa is in a deep funk and I don't think they have the wherewithall to snap out of it.
A .500 season and first round playoff exit on the road seems to be in the cards for the Gee-Gees.
Yeah, I agree that Queen's probably should take Ottawa given how the teams have played to this point. Stranger things have happened in CIS football this year, though, and Ottawa still has a lot of talent. It could be a pretty close game.
The above's by me: just forgot to switch Google accounts.
Anyone know who Queen's biggest loss was to?
;)
From that comment, I'm guessing it's a certain Laurier team that's still golden (and got a nice win over Ottawa the other day).
67-7 in 1999.It was an OUA/OQIFC cross over game.
My favourite moment of that game was listening to an older guy that obviouslly read the boards yelling "OH MY. WE'RE ALL SO SCARED OF THE MIGHTY, MIGHTY OQIFC" at about 50-0 (the "OUA sucks threads were as common then as they are now and the Quebec based posters were quite, um, confident in their predictions of how their league would stand up in the cross over games).
It was in 2000. I happen to remember since I commentated the game for CFRC.
Point taken, though. The O-QIFC wasn't so mighty, except for when it had a four-year run of Ottawa, Concordia, Laval and Ottawa playing in the Vanier Cup while not a single OUA team made it ... not to mention that in 2000, Queen's put 41 points up against a ranked Western team when it had only scored 39 its first 5 games against OQIFC teams.
[/Tyler'd]
I have my own 'd! Hooray!
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