Central Michigan University Athletics
Q&A With Coach Bonamego
11/20/2015 12:00:00 AM | Football
The Central Michigan football team defeated Kent State, 27-14, on Wednesday, improving to 6-5, 5-2 in the Mid-American Conference, and becoming bowl eligible for the fourth consecutive year. It was a bounce-back victory after the previous week's 28-23 loss to Toledo, which eliminated the Chippewas from MAC championship contention. CMU closes the regular season next Friday (1 p.m.) at Kelly/Shorts Stadium against Eastern Michigan (1-10, 0-7). CMUChippewas.com sat down with Chippewa coach John Bonamego on Friday.
CMUChippewas.com: How satisfying is it in your first year as the Chippewas coach to be bowl eligible, particularly in a season where many observers didn't figure the Chippewas would be?
John Bonamego: I know numerically it makes us eligible but I'm not allowing myself to go there. We have an important game left to play here at home. It's important because it's a conference game, it's important because it's the last home game for our seniors, it's important because it's an in-state rivalry game and it's important because winning this game would bring us to seven wins and that would really assure us a bowl. The way things stand right now across our conference I'm not sure that 6-6 guarantees you anything, so it's very important. That's just a mathematical number: 'Hey you have the six wins.' We need to go out and play well and get the seventh win to really lock ourselves in.
CMUChippewas.com: The loss to Toledo had eliminated you from MAC championship contention, and being in the hunt is always a major motivational factor for any team. Yet you came out displaying a lot of intensity against Kent State in jumping to a 17-0 lead. As a coach, that must bode well as you look ahead.
Bonamego: I'm very happy with the way we responded coming off the loss to Toledo. I think when you talk about the character of your team and the culture of your team you expect to see those things. You hope not to be in those positions. You hope to be able to be playing for a championship. But it's very important to know how they respond in those situations. Coach (Bill) Parcells used to say that all the time: 'When you hit that point in your season, that's when you really find out a lot about the character of your football team.' I never want to say that we're building for the future because I think if you don't do everything you can to win now you won't have a future. That's the nature of the business that we're in, it's very results driven. But when you're talking about building a culture that the players and everybody around the program recognizes that these opportunities are so limited. You only get X number of them as a college football player. If you're here for five years and use a redshirt year, that means you're going to play four years. That's 48 football games and then if you make a couple of (league) championship games that ups it to 50 and if you're in a bowl game four out of four years that's 54 games. You really can't afford to squander any of them. They're so precious. They all count and they all matter. And if you're made the right way, they're all individual events and you're going to go out and try to compete and win all of them. You can't let your circumstances dictate your approach to how you want to win and how you build a winning program. Yeah we're out of the conference race, but we're still trying to build a championship-caliber program. We always say that everything we do we're competing. If there's a way to keep score we're going to keep score and we're going to try to win. That's what competitors do and that's how winners are wired. And you want guys who are wired that way. When you roll the ball out there, you want guys who do everything they can to win. When they turn the lights on are they going to show up or are they going to scatter? I'm really proud of the guys that we have in our program, I'm proud of the leadership that we have. Not just in our senior class, but in all of our classes - we've got good leaders here. It's important to develop leadership and to do that you have to empower people. You have to enable them and you have to energize them. I've seen both sides of it. I've seen organizations that were run in such a totalitarian environment that it stunted the growth of the leadership.
CMUChippewas.com: In the second half Wednesday, your defense held Kent State to 51 yards and one first down. How much of that can you attribute to adjustments, and how much is it just plain old motivation?
Bonamego: It's a combination of both. You know it's 'We've given up to drives, two scores, to statistically the worst offense in the MAC. Let's get our stuff together.' The quarterback runs were things they hadn't shown much of at all. Not to say we didn't prepare, but they hadn't featured it like they did against us. They did a nice job with it. Making the adjustments at halftime is critical, but so is going out on the field and executing the adjustments. And I think that's one of the things, knock on wood, we've done a very good job of that this year.
CMUChippewas.com: A performance such as the one turned in by your defense in the second half must give you an awful lot of confidence in that unit, and it must feed their confidence as well.
Bonamego: I usually recap the game, what we did well, what we didn't do well, where we need to improve and that sort of thing. Success is the greatest motivation that there is. Anytime that you're able to take a lesson from the practice field or a meeting room or a halftime and then you go out and execute it and it helps you win, there's a lot of confidence in the game plan.
CMUChippewas.com: You got off to a quick start, jumping to a 17-0 lead, but Kent State scored two second-quarter touchdowns and at halftime, your lead was 20-14. What happened in the second quarter and how do you keep that from happening in the future?
Bonamego: It's a combination of a lot of things. You have a penalty or a dropped pass, you get behind in the down and distance. That (Kent State) was a very good defense. Statistically they were third in the league and so that was the strength of their football team. Drives can stall for any number of reasons. I think the weather was a definitely factor. It definitely limited some of the things that you had available to you, play calling and stuff. The second half, I think our ability to move the ball in the fourth quarter was a very big factor in us being able to hang on and win that game. We used up a lot of clock.
CMUChippewas.com: You got production from the run game in the fourth quarter when you really needed it to salt the game away. What do you have to do to get that kind of ground production in a more consistent basis?
Bonamego: There's a lot of young parts in that overall picture. You look at the offensive line and the backfield. To watch Jahray (Hayes) and Romello (Ross) run the ball and for us to be able to run it was big.
CMUChippewas.com: The game was played in a very heavy wind, yet your quarterback, Cooper Rush, seemed to handle throwing in to it pretty well, maybe better than he did throwing with the wind. Why was that?
Bonamego: We get a lot of practice at it because our place is pretty windy. Not many places are windier than Kelly/Shorts. There's just different strategies. You want to throw in-breaking routes, keep the ball down. Even when you're throwing with it so it doesn't sail as much. I think a lot of it is just the way things unfold.
CMUChippewas.com: Special teams played a major factor in the game, and you got a particularly solid performance from punter Ron Coluzzi. Three of his four punts were downed inside the Kent State 20-yard line, and one of was downed inside the 1. Are you getting what you'd like out of special teams?
Bonemgo: I thought special teams were a big factor. Getting the turnover (on a kickoff), which led to points. Field position, pinning them deep. They had minus yardage on their punt returns. I thought that was a big factor in the game. I'm probably our harshest critic in that regard, but I think we're improving. I won't be satisfied until we're at the top of the league in every statistical category. We're not there yet. We're still working at it.
