Saturday, June 24, 2017

Coogston Takeover: Recruiting Overview of Peyton Sawyer, Coogs on the Web

With 18 commits, after a slow start, Coach Major Applewhite and his staff picked up steam lately with the summer camps.

Today's recruiting highlight is Peyton Sawyer out of League City's Clear Springs High School. A three star recruit in 247sports.com Composite rankings, the 2016 junior was All-District as a wide receiver and return specialist.

His stat line included a total of 48 receptions with 10 TDs and 848 yards receiving along with one punt return and six kickoff returns for TDs.

He entertained offers from Houston, committed to Tulsa, Tulane, Arizona St, Texas St. and Texas Tech. After decommitting from Tulsa, Sawyer committed to the Cougars on June 23, 2017.

My observations based on his Hudle highlights
Kid has wheels to burn. Without watching to much Clear Springs highlights, it seems they run a pro set offense with QB under center. Sawyer lines up on the outside with and without a slot receiver. He does great on yards after catch. He is dangerous in open field and hard to bring down. On a couple of highlights, he's gone in motion and caught on the fly and is off to the races.

On kickoff returns, teams intentionally kick away from him short and opposite side of the field. How does the coaching staff counter that? Pretty simple, the kickoff receiver hands off to Sawyer and he does his damage.

Coach Applewhite and staff picked up a gem in Sawyer. To me Sawyer is flying under the radar with only Arizona St. and Texas Tech of the P5 breed sniffing around. Tulsa came and offered first and he committed right away. Once other offers came in, he decommitted from the Golden Hurricane. It remains to be seen if other P5 offers come his away and if the Coogs can hold on.

Below is the video of highlights I reviewed for this post. Enjoy! EDIT: For some reason the vidoe doesn't show completely on screen. Click on the Peyton Sawyer highlights for a better view.



Coogs on the Web 
I trying to promote the Houston Cougars in anyway I can. As such, I present links to other Coogs on the web trying to accomplish the same things. As such, I like to promote others trying to do Coog things on the web. So be sure to click on the links below.

The Shock the World podcast is starting a five part series on the upcoming 2017 football season. This episode is dedicated to the offense.

Another Cougar podcast are the great guys over at Scott and Holman Pawdcast. They take a look at the Year in Review, MLB Draft of Coogs and football recruiting.

Another site I like to promote is SB Nation's Underdog Dynasty. While SB Nation has sites dedicated to all the P5 schools, a few P5 conferences and even G5 conferences, the AAC gets short changed. Only UConn, Cincy, USF and UCF have devoted sites. Underdog Dynasty tries to fill the gap in football. So I give them a big thumbs up.

My goal is to eventually have a Coog dedicated site to pull all the HTOWN TAKEOVER links and resources in one place.

Cardiac Coogs, where are you? You've gone dormant.

Go Coogs!

Friday, March 31, 2017

Coogston Takeover - Links 3-31-17

Baylor Scandals documentary on Showtime - A murdered basketball player. A coach coaching players to lie to the police to cover up the murder.

Sexual assault and rape cases that rock a university to its foundations: President, AD and head football coach ousted over the scandal.

Showtime documents the Baylor University scandals.



Houston Women's Golf @ Clemson Invitational Leader Board

Thursday, March 16, 2017

AAC Basketball - Wichita St. Basketball Only Addition?

https://t.co/78eJjsftKE?amp=1

In general I'm against a basketball only addition but there is merit to this Sports Illustrated story.

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Coogston Takeover - Cougar, AAC Baseball

Welcome to the revamped something or other Houston Cougar blog or website I've attempted several times. It was many moons ago the Cougar Roar. Then I incorporated it into this blog. Recently I attempted to submit an article on recruiting to Cardiac Coogs. Wes the publisher accepted the article but never posted it.

So over time I longed for a Cougar website that would capture as much Cougar news as possible off and on the field. Cougars are great influential people in business, arts, politics, athletics and in all aspects of life. So why not have a place where all things Coog can be celebrated?

Thus my intent isn't to rival all the great things Cardiac Coogs, Coogfans, Cougars Den, Scott and Holman Pawdcast, Jose Duarte or Coogfun are doing. Instead I want to tie it all together and continue what Tom Herman's Htown Takeover started and bring it together as the Coogston Takeover.

Houston Baseball 
Houston vs. Cal St. Fullerton
The #20 Coogs hosted #7 Cal St. Fullerton for a three game series over the weekend. The Coogs took the first game on Friday on the strength of starting pitcher Seth Romero. Romero struck out 10 Titans enroute to 7-4 win at Schroeder Park. Game details can be found at UH official website Houston 7 Cal St. Fullerton 4.

In the second game, the Coogs dropped a 4-1 decision to drop the Cougars to 7-3 on the year.

The third game was canceled due to inclement weather and will not be rescheduled.

Midweek Game vs. Prairie View A&M
Wednesday night features the Cougars hosting the 1-12 Prairie View A&M Panthers.

Houston's probable starter is LHP Trey Cumbie who sports a line of 1.12 ERA, 0-0, 2 BB and 7 Ks over 8.0 inning pitched. For 2016, Cumbie made 15 appearances with five starts posting a 5-2 record and a 1.29 ERA. Over 56 innings pitched, he struck out 42 while only allowing 9 walks and 8 earned runs. In 2016 opponents hit at a rate of .214 average while this year opponents are batting .281 against him.

Weekend Series vs. #10 Baylor Bears
The Cougars will travel to play another ranked team this weekend when the visit the #10 Baylor Bears. I will have more series info later in the week.

Around the American Conference
Currently only Houston and East Carolina are ranked and the Coogs are not ranked in every poll. d1baseball.com ranks ECU 18 and UH 23, National College Baseball Writers of American rank ECU 19 and UH 24, Baseball American ranks ECU 8 and UH is unranked while USA Today Poll ranks ECU 17 and UH unranked.

There is also an RPI ranking on the official NCAA website. I'm not sure how much weight it has in selecting the field of 64 but it's worth a look. Current as of 3-7, the American teams in the top 64 are #31 South Florida, #38 Houston, # 57 East Carolina and #64 Memphis.  Central Florida remains right outside the magical line at 67 despite an 11-2 record. After the top five, there is a major drop off in the RPI for the conference. The next closest team is UConn at 140. Cincinnati falls in at 154 for while Tulane anchors the curve at 258.

East Carolina made the biggest jump from the previous RPI standings from 81 to 57. Memphis dropped from 49 to 64 while Houston jumped a few spots from 46 as wells as South Florida slightly moving up from 31.

Being an eight team league, the AAC needs a strong showing in out of conference games to increase the RPI standings once league play gets under way. Houston has a chance with taking on Baylor. UCF hosts Florida St. in a two game tussle, dropping the first game 5-3.


Saturday, October 10, 2015

New American Frontier - Featured Game of the Week: Navy vs. #15 Notre Dame

As the conference continues to look for credibility in the eyes of the nation, another opportunity arises this week. Navy carries the United States flag and AAC banner into South Bend on the Golden Domer network aka NBC. 

Navy hasn't beaten Notre Dame since 2010 when Navy beat ND 3 out of 4 times from 2007 to 2010. Recently the Irish have run off four straight but Navy has been competitive the last two meetings.

The Irish are listed as a 14.5 point favorite. Needless to but Irish dominate the series 75-12-1.  Tomorrow the Middies hope to inch closer to narrowing the gap. Can they?

The keys for Navy? Keenan Reynolds, Keenan Reynolds and more Keenan Reynolds. Notre Dame is going to game plan for Reynolds but until they can actually stop him, Navy must feed the Irish a steady Reynolds diet. Of course Navy coaches will keep that in mind when doing their own game plan. If they can work in some play action, they might be able to make Irish defenders hesitate enough to let Reynolds run loose. On the other hand, ND did contain Reynolds to 47 yards on 18 carries but Navy still ran wild with 336 yards. 

The Middie defense must get to ND QB early and often. Even though he is young and inexperienced, Deshone Kizer has performed well since been thrown into the fire. The Irish will need to mix it up with C.J. Prosise running and WR Will Fuller to keep Navy defense off balance.

This is a big game not only for Navy but for the conference resume. With East Carolina traveling to quasi-member BYU and USF hosting Syracuse, the American has a chance to make a resounding statement to the rest of the college football world....The American is no longer rising....We Are Here! Deal With It!

My Sports Allegiances

My favorite teams are in no particular order: Houston Texans, San Antonio Spurs(NBA champs 99, 03, 05, 07, 14) and the Houston Cougars, Pittsburgh Penguins (Stanley Cups 91, 92, 08, 16, 17)
My secondary teams are: Houston Dynamo(MLS Champs 06, 07), Houston Astros (NL Champs 05), Houston Rockets (NBA Champs 94, 95)
Teams I Hate: Anything out of Dallas
Teams I Enjoy Seeing Lose: Texas Longhorns, Texas A&M Aggies, Baylor Bears football
Teams that are Insignificant: rice owls