Ryne Robinson avoids a tackle in Miami's win over Buffalo. Miami faces a Zips team Saturday still winless in the MAC.
The Miami University football team's win Sunday may have been against 1-5 University at Buffalo, but Head Coach Shane Montgomery said in his weekly press conference Tuesday that the win is actually much bigger than advertised.
"We just needed a win," Montgomery said. "We needed to walk off that football field having won a football game."
Miami football has had its share of success in recent years, Montgomery said, but the young players on this team haven't had a chance to be a part of that and it was important to finally generate some of that winning taste.
Football is often quoted as a game of inches, and Miami's losses haven't been due to the RedHawks' inability to compete, but rather its inability to gain that extra inch.
Going into Sunday's contest, Miami had lost by an average margin of 2.5 points to its Mid-American Conference opponents and had played its nonconference opponents competitively until late in the games.
One of the better features of Saturday's game, Montgomery said, was that a lot of the younger players are starting to make plays.
Players like freshman wide receiver Dustin Woods, who hauled in four receptions for 54 yards, and freshman defensive lineman Travis Craven, who has recorded a stop for a loss in each of his first five career games, are starting to make the plays that make a difference between a loss and a win.
"When I think about the young team we've got a bunch of redshirt freshmen and true freshmen coming in," Woods said. "We're going to be a true force to reckon with down the line."
These RedHawks, however, haven't been thrown into the fire without their share of adversity. This year's banner headline for the RedHawks has been one of inexperience and injuries.
After weeks of sporadic play, junior offensive tackle Charlie Norden was officially labeled as out for the season this week, as he will undergo surgery to heal a nagging foot injury.
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With Norden out and sophomore offensive guard Matt McKeown week-to-week, Miami has been decimated of any of its experience on the offensive line this season.
"I knew we were going to have to throw some guys out there who weren't ready yet," Montgomery said. "We've tried to move people around. We'll try to throw the best five out there each week."
With injuries plaguing much of the offensive line, Montgomery has finally settled some continuity into the offense by keeping players like sophomore offensive lineman Dave DiFranco into regular positions. DiFranco has only recently been kept at the left tackle position after weeks of being shuffled around the line.
But with this adversity is a young team that's starting to show promise and consistency, Montgomery said. Miami heads into the second half of the season having filled many of the questionable gaps they started with.
Junior quarterback Mike Kokal has earned himself the established starting role by showing more and more promise each week.
"I thought Mike played pretty well," Montgomery said. "I thought it might have been one of his more consistent football games."
Kokal's mobility and ability to make good decisions was key to Sunday's win, Montgomery said.
Although Miami's kicking game struggled earlier in the season, freshman place kicker Trevor Cook has played himself into the starting role and has remained a consistent threat for the RedHawks lately.
With some of the offensive woes starting to straighten themselves out on the season, the RedHawks head into Saturday's game at University of Akron with increased confidence and taste of victory on their lips.
Whether this recent upswing in Miami's fortune will be consistently played into this weekend's match up will be extremely telling of things to come for this team.
"Akron is a team that is statistically very comparable to us," Montgomery said. "Hopefully, we get some confidence now."
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