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Home > Blogs > RedHawk rumblings | Miami University sports news > Archives > 2008 > September > 17 > Entry
Emotions surge slowly toward Saturday
By Pete Conrad
The end of Miami University football practice on Wednesday, Sept. 17, when coach Shane Montgomery gathered his players in a huge circle, was a bit more sedate than the end of Tuesday’s practice, when Montgomery lashed into his players for poor play, poor practice, poor everything.
Did the RedHawks practice much, much better on Wednesday, looking like a new team? Or did Montgomery have a change of heart?
No. And no.
It’s the weekly ebb and flow of practice, of Montgomery carefully trying to prepare his players emotionally for Saturday’s contest at Nippert Stadium.
“One thing you don’t want to do is peak too early in the week,” Montgomery explained. “We weren’t anywhere near as high today as we will be Saturday.”
He added that Tuesday “is always a hard-work day, sort of a feeling-out day.”
The Miami coach said having the Cincinnati Bearcats on the schedule this week “probably is good for us.”
The thought of facing the rival Bearcats and winning back the spoils of this 1-on-1 war, the Victory Bell, does wonders for motivation. It’s something the team needs badly.
And the RedHawks really do take the Victory Bell seriously.
“We want our bell back,” Miami nose tackle Martin Channels said. “That’s the main thing.”
A lack of motivation, on the other hand, showed last week when it took the RedHawks most of the first half to get worked up about winning their game against Charleston Southern, even though Miami was 0-2 at the time.
It’s difficult to play at a high emotional level against a team you don’t know, probably have never heard of, isn’t even a Division I-A team. Especially when a week earlier you were playing in front of more than 100,000 fans. Even more especially when, on game day, you might be blinded by the glare coming off the thousands of empty metal bleachers on the student side of the field. Yes, Montgomery warned his players not to take Charleston Southern lightly, but high emotion is not something you can be talked into easily.
The main thrust of Montgomery’s biting comments to his team on Tuesday, however, were that if the RedHawks played no better against Cincinnati than they did against Charleston Southern, the RedHawks will lose that game. And it won’t be pretty.
“If we make some of the same mistakes we made last Saturday (against Charleston Southern),” he said, the Bearcats “will make it a long day for us.”
It’s not that Montgomery isn’t grateful for last weekend’s victory.
“It was a good win for us. We needed a win,” he said. “It was a bit closer than we wanted. It wasn’t a great football game. They made some plays on us early. After falling behind 13-0 our kids and our staff made a lot of good adjustments to get back in the game.
“We made some big plays on both sides of the ball, which we had not done the first two games,” Montgomery said. “We did do a good job of coming up with some big turnovers. Those two interceptions were huge. But we have to cut down on physical and mental mistakes. Those are things we can’t afford to do week by week.”
Montgomery added that “we played well at times.”
He knows this week, against this week’s opponent, that won’t be enough.
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