Pike shines in Nippert Stadium finale

Tony Pike was one of sixteen seniors who took the field for the University of Cincinnati on Friday afternoon for the final time. The seniors—who decide which uniforms the ‘Cast will wear—decided upon red tops with black pants, a topic I shall breach later, but no matter what the ‘Cats seem to have on at home, they always come away with a win.

Led by Pike’s six touchdown passes, a new school single-game record, the Bearcats defeated the Big Ten bottom feeder Illinois 49-36. Pike threw 46 passes on the day, completing 32 of them for 399 yards. Two scores went to Mardy Gilyard who broke Dominck Goodman’s career touchdown mark with 24 career TD snags. Gilyard—also playing for the final time in Cincinnati—scored the ‘Cats first touchdown on a kickoff return.

Gilyard dives into the endzone in front of Channel 9 (WCPO) camerman Mark Slaughter

Ben Guidugli, a junior tight end, and brother of the former single game touchdown pass record holder Gino, caught seven passes for 149 yards and two touchdowns. Armon Binns and DJ Woods tallied one TD grab each.

And, for the first time in school history the UC Bearcats are 11-0. They head to Pittsburgh next weekend for the de facto Big East title game. Not to promote myself as the next Nostradamus or anything, but I stated back in March, “The December 5th matchup with Pitt is primed to be another decisive Big East game, at least that’s what the Big East office is hoping for. If this season turns out anything like last season did, then we’ll see the Panthers and the Bearcats duking it out on national television for the Big East trophy. The side pot for this game will then be the “River City Rivalry” trophy.”-- http://adamniemeyer.blogspot.com/2009/03/big-east-football-schedules-cincinnati.html

Even with the Pittsburgh loss last night, this game is for all the marbles. But, we’ve still got one whole week to discuss that one.

Some notes and thoughts on Illinois:
-First, people need to calm down about Brian Kelly to Notre Dame. And stop asking me if he’s going too. I don’t know anything more than you do. When I do, I might tell you, but it’s highly doubtful.

-Second, the uniform selection for this game was stupid. Period, end of discussion. I like our seniors, I love what they’ve done for this program and everything they’ve endured, but we only wear red jerseys once a year, the “Ring of Red” game. No other time should we wear red jerseys. But, I’ll forgive them for the faux pas, we won handily.
-Third, who cares that we didn’t run the ball that much? Obviously Big Ten supporters would proclaim their dominance over the ‘lowly’ Big East by pointing to this game and its end result. One person told me during the game, “My dad is telling me how bad UC would do in the Big Ten right now.” Gee, glad we don’t play in the Big Ten. Of course if we did, we might be the number two team in the nation right now.

-Which brings me to point number four: We need a lot of help to make it to Pasadena. Texas A&M gave Texas a slight scare but couldn’t pull it off. Auburn was about ninety seconds away from creating BCS mayhem on Friday too. So far, UC is fifth in all three polls (USA Today, AP and BCS). UC needs Nebraska to defeat Texas on Saturday and hope that their defeat of Pittsburgh is enough to jump TCU in the Coaches’ Poll to possibly make it into the national title game against the winner of the Alabama/Florida SEC title game. It almost makes your head spin.

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving weekend. Even this week is the final week of classes and I’m going to be quite busy with class and football I’ll try to sneak in some time to preview the UC-Pitt game in depth. You also may hear me on a radio station near you (if you live in Pittsburgh—stay “tuned” for more details).