Bahamas Bowl Pleasure And Business for CMU
12/11/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Andy Sneddon, CMUChippewas.com
NASSAU, Bahamas - Yes, of course, coach Dan Enos and the Central Michigan football team are thrilled to be playing in what many would consider paradise.
But at the end of the day, the Chippewas are headed to the inaugural Popeyes Bahamas Bowl to play - and win - a football game. CMU will take on Western Kentucky in the game on Christmas Eve. It will be carried live on ESPN with a noon kickoff.
"It's an honor and a privilege to be here, to be in a place that is one of the great vacation destinations in the world," Enos said Thursday during the bowl game press conference in Nassau. "To play a football game here, a bowl game here, what an outstanding experience this is going to be for our student-athletes, our families, our coaches, our administration, everyone.
"I think that bowl games are a reward and I think that bowl games can be used as a time to educate your student-athletes, so certainly we'll take an experience like this. I think this will be a wonderful opportunity.
"We're here to work. We're here to play a football game on national TV so it's really important that we play well, but we certainly will provide our student-athletes with an opportunity to have fun and educate themselves about the Bahamas."
Enos and his staff have been busy this week educating themselves on a very good Western Kentucky team that won its final four regular-season games, capped by a 67-66 overtime thriller over previously unbeaten Marshall.
Western Kentucky quarterback Brandon Doughty, the Conference USA Player of the Year, has thrown for 4,344 yards and 44 touchdowns this season. Both numbers top all Football Bowl Subdivision passers. Doughty, a senior who was recently granted a sixth year of eligibility by the NCAA, threw eight TD passes against Marshall.
Western Kentucky averages 525.3 yards per game in total offense, sixth-best in FBS. Running back Leon Allen has rushed for 1,490 yards and 12 TDs. He averages 5.8 yards per carry.
"Their quarterback is an outstanding player," Enos said. "It all starts with him. He's a tremendous passer, he's tough, and he makes plays.
"Their running back is very good. There's going to be a lot of challenges. You've got to try and slow them down and we're going to have to tackle very well."
The game shapes up to potentially be a classic matchup of a strong defense against an explosive offense. The Chippewas led the Mid-American Conference and rank 16th in FBS in total defense. The Chippewas were also No. 1 in the MAC against both the run and the pass. CMU ranks 18th nationally against the run.
The Chippewas are no slouch on offense, but prefer a run-oriented ball-control game designed to keep the opposing offense sidelined.
Running back Thomas Rawls was the main workhorse throughout much of the regular season, rushing for 1,103 yards despite missing almost four entire games.
And, the Chippewas aren't without their own explosive weapons on the offensive side of the ball. Senior wide receiver Titus Davis, who missed three games because of injury, caught 54 passes for 843 yards and nine touchdowns.
Davis enters the bowl game with a CMU record 33 TD receptions, and he is the only player in FBS history to catch at least eight TDs in each of his four seasons.
"Any time you can start a sentence with `the only player in NCAA history,' it's quite an accomplishment," Enos said. "He will certainly have a future after this game, playing on Sundays. He's a tremendous worker. He's been pretty much 85, 90 percent the whole year and hopefully we'll get him back to 100 percent here with a little delay before the game."
Enos said the Chippewas will turn up the heat, literally, in their indoor practice facility in preparation for the game, which figures to be played in heat similar to what Midwesterners experience mid-summer.
"We're going to try to get our indoor facility heated up as hot as we can get it to try to get our players acclimated to the weather a little bit," he said.
The only time the teams have met was in the 2012 Little Caesars Pizza Bowl at Ford Field in Detroit. The Chippewas won, 24-21.
"We do have a decent amount of our (current) players who got an opportunity to play in that bowl game and unfortunately we did not come out on top," said Jeff Brohm, who is in his first year as the Hilltoppers' coach. "Our guys are excited about this matchup to play a team that beat us a couple years ago in a bowl game.
"This is a (Central Michigan) team that is tough. They play fundamentally sound football, they'll run the ball at you, they're physical, and they play outstanding defense. Those are normally the tough teams to play against. We have to make sure that we're ready to go. It's going to be a tough matchup."
The Popeyes Bahamas Bowl marks the first time to college football teams have played a postseason bowl game outside the United States or Canada.
