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Marshall is treading water
It’s odd to say that Marshall’s 2017 season has been a disappointment when 2016 finished with a 3-9 record, but the Herd simply didn’t beat good teams this year. Marshall closed the regular season with a heartbreaking 28-27 home loss to Southern Miss. The Herd finished with a 7-5 record, losing four of their last five games to finish the season. None of their wins was over a team with a winning record. The Marshall fan base knows a championship product when they see one and they know they don’t have one.
With a crowd of 18,361 today, that sets MU’s final home attendance-per-game average down to 21,741, the lowest the program has had in the entire 21st century.
— Thundering Herd Zone (@TheHerdZone) November 26, 2017
The above tweet should raise more than a few eyebrows in the athletic department. Just like it’s good for Conference USA when the Florida and Texas schools are doing well, it’s also good when the most recognized brand in the conference is doing well and Marshall just doesn’t appear to be trending up under the current coaching staff.
Expect to see some staff changes from Doc Holliday, as the fan base appears to want to move on from offensive coordinator Bill Legg. If not, we’ll see more of the same from Marshall. A record good enough to reach a bowl game, but not good enough to compete for conference titles.
UTEP is officially the worst team in Conference USA
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The Miners finished the 2017 regular season with a 28-7 loss to UAB. While the Miners did appear to be scrappy in the early going of Mike Price’s interim head coaching tenure, they simply didn’t have the offense to truly scare teams.
Each FBS conference has an identity and in C-USA, you need to have a prolific offense to win games. Under Sean Kugler the Miners were consistently near the bottom of Conference USA on offense.
UTEP just hired The Citadel’s Jim Senter to be their Athletic Director earlier this week. UTEP’s head coaching search has been quiet lately, but once it picks up Senter should do his best to hire an offense-first head coach in El Paso.
Staff changes might be made in San Antonio
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Speaking of staff changes, Frank Wilson is kind of in the same boat as Doc Holliday. A great start to the season ended with a poor finish due to a poor offense. The Roadrunners suffered a lot of injuries on the offensive line and relied on some freshmen to hold steady but they couldn’t get the job done.
UTSA failed to score over 20 points in their last four games. The Roadrunners scored just six points in their loss to Louisiana Tech in the season finale. Due to some bad injury luck we could see Frank Wilson bring offensive coordinator Frank Scelfo back for a third year, but there’s no doubt he’ll face some pressure to move on from Scelfo. This year’s Runners featured a ton of seniors on offense. Next year there will be fresh faces at quarterback and wide receiver.