By Howard Tsumura
VarsityLetters.ca
VANCOUVER — It a little crazy to think that when the UBC Thunderbirds come charging onto the field Friday to face the visiting Calgary Dinos (6 p.m., Canada West TV) that they will have reached the midway point of the Canada West football regular season … in just 23 days.
In what has seemed more like a millennium than a minute, the ‘Birds have indeed reached their annual Homecoming Game in need of their most complete effort of the season, coming off back-to-back losses to national powers Saskatchewan and Regina, following its 21-9 home win over the Manitoba Bisons way back on Aug. 28.
Last week’s 37-20 loss at home to Rams (3-0) was a clear step forward from the previous week’s 51-14 drubbing at the hands of host Huskies (2-1), and if fortunes are to continue to rise, they would seem to be even more motivated not to fall to 1-3 because a loss to Calgary (2-1) would send them into the second half battling for playoffs with just one of its final three regular season games at home.
With all of that said, here’s three things to digest from last week’s loss to Regina as we prepare for a sell-out Homecoming weekend crowd against a Dinos team which has bounced back from an opening-week overtime loss to Regina with back-to-back wins over Manitoba and Alberta.
1 IN A RUSH TO STOP THE RUSH
It was alarming the way in which Saskatchewan built its lead to as many as 44 points in the fourth quarter of its win over the ‘Birds back on Sept. 5, and afterwards Nill said as much.
And when games like that happen, they need to be answered the very next week with a complete about-face performance.
There is little doubt that UBC, at the very least, re-established the largest part of its core identity through the mettle it showed in orchestrating a second-half rally which lifted it from a 20-6 halftime deficit to within 23-20 heading into the fourth quarter.
But alas, with just over eight minutes remaining and UBC looking to pull back to within three points at 30-27, Regina’s Liam LaBelle intercepted ‘Birds quarterback Derek Engel on the Rams’ own five-yard line.
That interception was returned 40 yards to the Regina 45-yard line, and from there, with conference ground leader Marshall Erichsen putting the finishing touches on his 196-yard night, the Rams scored the game’s final major with just 11 seconds remaining. Without hyperbole, pivot Friday’s game took on that interception was about as close to a 14-point play as you’re likely to see.
Yet as easy as it may be to put all the spotlight on that one play, and it was a huge play, the truth has to be viewed through a wider lens. And if you look through it with a balanced eye, it has become more clear each week that UBC’s defensive front has sorely missed two of its injured core veterans (Aaron Parker and Taaj Jhooty), as a young unit has done everything it knows how to try and slow the huge, gashing gains by the opposition’s rushing attack.
“Let’s call a spade a spade, we couldn’t stop the run,” Nill told GoThunderbirds.ca Friday night after Regina rushed for 206 yards becoming the third straight team to break the 200-yard mark along the ground against UBC this season.
When Nill spoke to VarsityLetters.ca on Monday, he delved even deeper.
“We have to be gap integral,” he began. “We have athletes that are trying to do someone else’s job when they just need to focus on their own. You’re trying hard to make a play that is someone else’s play and by doing so, leave us vulnerable in other areas. The game is played with 12 guys doing their jobs, and we just aren’t doing that yet.
“(Our) defensive linemen have to keep the O-linemen from expanding and getting off to the next level,” Nill continued. “Every defence is designed, more or less, to free up the linebackers to make plays against the run game, which is ours is too. We’re just not getting enough bodies to the ball carrier.”
2 QB SHUFFLE HAS ITS HOT AND COLD MOMENTS
UBC decided early last week, as preparations began for Regina, that the veteran Derek Engel would move into the team’s starting spot ahead of freshman Drew Viotto.
And with the command of the offence off the opening snap now all his, Engel showed an innate connection when looking for both of the team’s top two receivers thus far this season in Shemar McBean and Trey Montour.
Right off the top, on the game’s first play, he hooked up for a 28-yard connection with the speedster McBean, later hit him with an electrifying 62-yard touchdown strike in the third quarter which began the UBC comeback, and later, found him again for a 40-yard strike on the drive which unfortunately ended with the interception at the UBC five.
On the day, Engel was 21-of-29 for 297 yards, with a touchdown and two interceptions. Viotto, who assumed the role Engel had been playing in short yardage snaps, came in for one play and threw a two-yard TD pass to Jeff Curtis. As we referenced following the Manitoba game, the ‘Birds can have an ideal situation at the pivot as long as all parties have buy-in. Over this rocky 0-2 stretch, that still seems to be the case.
“I think when Derek takes his time, sets his feet and throws, he has as good an arm as you need,” Nill said Monday, stressing that the bad things can happen when the focus on his fundamentals is not there.
“Derek Engel, you saw it with the McBean pass,” the coach added of the 62-yard TD pass. “When he sets his feet and throws the ball, he’s as good as you need to be.”
3 TYSON LEWIS UNDAUNTED IN HIS TRAIL BY FIRE
Last week we touched on all of the youth seeing frontline duty with this season’s edition of the Thunderbirds.
It’s foolhardy to think that maturation process can come to fruition over one or two weeks.
Yet as you watched Friday’s game, there was reason to hold continued hope that payoff would come with patience.
For these eyes, it was especially noticeable in the defensive secondary.
UBC’s second-year safety Tyson Lewis had perhaps the best game of his ‘Birds career, the Calgary native suiting up in just his eighth career U SPORTS contest while starting in what you would have to call his positional group’s cerebral centre.
Most impressively, Lewis delivered a massive hit that resulted in a forced fumble and subsequent second-half recovery by his teammate Clark Leonard. It wasn’t turned into points, but it captured perfectly the degree to which UBC had suddenly wrested all of the game’s momentum away from Regina.
As well, of the seven tackling plays in which he was involved, five of them (two solo) were against the Rams’ Erichsen, who despite his prodigious rushing numbers, would surely have obliterated the 200-yard mark himself.
“I definitely love playing against competition, and (No.) 35 is a great running back,” Lewis said of Erichsen. “Any chance I get to go and compete and make a play and do something for my team, I love it. I honestly am not thinking about the personal stuff. Even if I do make a couple of plays, I want to come out with the win every day and that is what we didn’t get. We have to go after it and fix what needs to be fixed for next week.”
And on the added responsibilities that come when you anchor the back end of the defence?
“Safety has to be the quarterback of the defence. I got to command everyone, get everyone lined and up and call the play,” said Lewis. “So I’ve gotta lead… first- or second-year, whoever’s on the field, you have to play like a starter. Doesn’t matter rookie or fourth year… You gotta play like a starter. So just got to lead my guys and get us ready.”
Lewis continues to grow when it comes to honing and refining his gift of physicality, not the easiest thing to do when you have a seemingly endless supply of intensity, energy and old-school tackling technique.
“Tyson is a young guy that needs experience,” Nill said. “He plays with a little bit of reckless abandon, but that also hurts him. So he’s got to find his balance where he can eliminate his mistakes because of aggression and play consistently.
“But he plays the game the right way,” the coach added. “That says something. When you play the game the way it is supposed to be played, that is a big check mark in my book.”
Nill knows that with the season reaching the midway mark Friday, all of that learning and growing needs to dove-tail into a big, fat W.
He’s hopeful that one of the game’s oldest axioms, however, begins to manifest itself with maturity and production.
“We’re paying our dues with him for sure because of his youth,” he said of Lewis, “just as we are with No. 5 (freshman corner Jehovany Batalonga) and No. 38 (second-year halfback Darrien Brown).Those three are going to be tremendous football players, but we’re dealing with young kids learning how to play the game the right way.”
(Writer’s note — thanks to Len Catling for providing quotes from Friday’s UBC post-game media scrum)
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