Gophers vs. Miami (OH)

Well, since I'm going to heading to the big Gopher game with Theory, I might as well do a quick preview, although I really don't have a whole lot of excitement here.

It's no secret the Gopher played poorly last week. However, they did manage to show some life in the second half, at least until the critical drive and OT.

On offense, they opened the game in the spread offense, and looked to mix up the passing and running game at about 50/50. This didn't work, since Adam Weber looked worse than Bryan Cupito, and the Gophers were unable to get much going.

In the second half, they stayed in the spread offense, but clearly concentrated on the run and were nearly unstoppable. If they come out and stay with a run-oriented offense, they should be able to move the ball on the Red Hawks, who are 1-0 after beating Ball State 14-13 last week. Ball State was able to run the ball fairly effectively against Miami last week (4.1 ypc), and Minnesota is a better rushing team and should be able to move the ball.

The Gopher defense was clearly horrible last week, and I'm not so sure anything is going to change this week. The Red Hawks were a successful running team last week, but really struggled with the passing game. Obviously, pass defense is the real issue with the Gophers. So this sounds pretty good for the Gophers, however, it was pretty much the same thing as last week. Going into the game it looked like Bowling Green was poor through the air, and that would play into the Gophers' hands.

Clearly, that did not happen.

I look for the Gophers offense to click from the start, and then stall in the second half after the Red Hawks start loading up at the line of scrimmage to stop the run. Miami shouldn' be able to score on the Gophers as easily as BG, but the Gopher D is so bad they will be able to put some points on the board.

The line on this one is Minnesota -8.5, and I'm putting this one at Minnesota 24, Miami 21, so Miami +8.5 it is.