sportkingston Staff
Claude Scilley |
Brought To You By
|
| |
Home > Articles > CIS Football > Calgary ends Western's football season with decisive win in Mitchell Bowl
Calgary ends Western's football season with decisive win in Mitchell Bowl
Posted: November 16th, 2013 @ 10:01pm
A week too late for it to do the Queen's Golden Gaels any good, the mighty Western Mustangs played a dreadful football game Saturday.
On a windy, snowy, minus-10 degree day in Calgary, the Mustangs, the heretofore No. 1 team in the land, was humbled 44-3 by the Calgary Dinosaurs in the Mitchell Bowl, one of two national semifinals from where the last remaining undefeated teams in Canada emerged with berths in next Saturday's Vanier Cup game.
The Dinos, making their third appearance in the national final in the last five years, will face the defending champion Laval rouge et or, 48-21 winner Saturday over Atlantic conference champ Mount Allison in the Uteck Bowl.
By any dimension you'd care to measure the teams Saturday in Calgary, the Mustangs would fail miserably. The nation's leading offence in the regular year, averaging 648 yards per game, managed just 256 yards against a Calgary defence that, believe it or not in an undefeated season, was 19th in Canada this year, allowing almost 450 yards per game.
To put that in better perspective, the worst offensive team in the country this year averaged 260 yards per game. That's four more yards than Western gained against a defence that was better this year only than such teams as York, Carleton, Waterloo and winless Alberta.
Western turned the ball over seven times. The Mustangs' special teams were, well, not very special. A field goal was blocked; twice Calgary gained first down from a fake punt; the Mustangs fumbled a punt and a Western punt was returned 80 yards by a guy named Simonise (pronounced like the car wax) who was just 19th in Canada - there's that number again - with an average return of just over 10 yards in the regular year.
That punt return would prove to be the pivotal play in the game, turning a manageable 10-0 deficit into a soul-destroying 17-0 hole before 11 minutes had been played.
Never mind the injury to Mustangs quarterback Will Finch. This one was over long before he was no longer able to hobble around the field.
(Likely the more devastating injury was the one that kept all-star centre Matt Van Praet out of the Mustangs lineup.)
Western's defence didn't seem to have an answer for Calgary's attack, which appeared to be built around some fairly straightforward running plays and a short to intermediate passing attack, the kind of patient game the Mustangs don't often see in Ontario.
Ultimately the Dinos, a young team - frighteningly so for anyone in Canada West who has championship aspirations in the next three years - took what the Mustangs gave, never reached too far, and waited for Western to make mistakes. More important than that, though, they took advantage of the mistakes the Mustangs made: A fumbled punt became a Calgary field goal; an interception became another field goal as time expired in the first half. A turnover on downs early in the fourth quarter led to the game-clinching touchdown. Later, an interception was returned for a touchdown that officially turned the game into a rout.
Compare that bounty to what Queen's was able to exact a week ago in the Yates Cup game, when the Gaels recovered a fumble and blocked a kick in Western's end of the field in the first quarter and, with a strong wind at their backs, managed a measly field goal.
Good teams won't make a lot of mistakes. If you don't make them pay when they make them early in the game, you imbue them with confidence and make it less and less likely they'll make any more as the game continues.
Calgary demonstrated yesterday that if you don't let a good team get away with its mistakes, it's apt to become flustered, and, unaccustomed as it is to dealing with hardship, it just might make some more. Now you're the team with the energy, playing with your heads up, waiting to pounce with the elan of an ambidextrous drummer playing whack-a-mole on the midway.
Perhaps there was something more than snow in the air Saturday, an aura that was the unseen hand causing all those dropped balls and underthrown Western passes. Maybe the spirits were not pleased that Western, a team whose logo used to bear a striking resemblance to the helmet crest of that other team that inhabits McMahon Stadium, would dare to come to the home of the Calgary Stampeders with that homely school crest on their helmets instead. 'So the stampeding pony isn't good enough for you, eh? We'll see about that,' the football gremlins must have thought.
(And how dare they call themselves Western, the angry apparitions may have mused, when the only thing of note they're west of is the place where Rob Ford is mayor?)
Not that Calgary would need such artificial incentive. The Dinos were the unlovely step-sister of the Canadian intercollegiate elite all year, never able to rise above No. 3 in the national poll of university football reporters. Four other teams from two other conferences spent time ranked ahead of Calgary at some point during the Dinos' undefeated campaign.
Now the No. 3 team is one of the last two standing. Beating Laval in Peps Stadium, where the rouge et or has won 64 consecutive games since September, 2003 - including a decisive 29-2 victory over Calgary in the 2010 Vanier Cup - will not be easy. It's unlikely the deep-thinking pundits will gave the Dinos a chance.
But, then, nobody gave them a chance against the former juggernaut known as Western, either. Laval, be advised: take this Calgary team lightly at your own peril.
Related Articles:
|
|
Support sportkingston
|
Follow sportkingston
|
Search
Looking for a specific article, person, event, or subject?
|
|
