{"id":238,"date":"2010-09-15T09:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-15T16:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capitalsports.us\/?p=238"},"modified":"2010-09-15T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2010-09-15T16:01:00","slug":"dont-overlook-cincinnatis-defense-thursday-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=238","title":{"rendered":"Don’t overlook Cincinnati’s defense Thursday night"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When you think of Cincinnati football, you tend to think of offense. That high-octane ability to score carried Brian Kelly\u2019s team last year and landed Kelly at Notre Dame. As for defense, well, the Bearcats ended the 2009 season by coughing up points, especially in a 51-24 loss to Florida in the Sugar Bowl.<\/div>\n
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The 2009 Bearcats defense gave 23.1 points per game and 3.6 yards per rush \u2013 nothing spectacular for a 12-1 team.<\/div>\n
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This year, though, the rush defense is ranked 10th<\/sup> in the country, allowing only 71.0 yards per game and 2.3 yards per carry. Granted, Cincinnati is 1-1 after a 28-14 loss at Fresno State and 40-7 win over Indiana State, so this isn\u2019t exactly the Pittsburgh Steelers. But given N.C. State\u2019s inexperience at running back and along the offensive line, it adds an interesting element to Thursday\u2019s game at Carter-Finley Stadium.<\/div>\n
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\u201cThey are very aggressive and they run very well,\u201d Wolfpack coach Tom O\u2019Brien said of the Cincinnati defense. \u201cThere are always a lot of black helmets around the football when the play is over. They have experience at the linebacker position and in the secondary.\u201d<\/div>\n
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O\u2019Brien said Cincinnati has switched schemes some in recent years and has now settled on a 4-3 that includes some hefty players in the middle of the defensive line.<\/div>\n
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State will throw a young pair of running backs at that front. Redshirt freshman Dean Haynes and true freshman Mustafa Greene will continue to share carries, and O\u2019Brien said what he\u2019s really looking for is for them to cut upfield hard and not fumble.<\/div>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just trying to get one good back out of two guys playing hard,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you think of Cincinnati football, you tend to think of offense. That high-octane ability to score carried Brian Kelly\u2019s team last year and landed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}