The college football bowl season is underway and on Monday the next matchup will be going down on ESPN at 2 PM, as the Ohio Bobcats take on the East Carolina Pirates and the game should be a solid one with two teams going at it in the Beef O Brady's St. Petersburg bowl game and it will be streaming live online from the WatchESPN website.
The Pirates come in with a very solid offensive unit and junior quarterback Shane Carden will be the main focus for the Bobcats defense, as he has passed for nearly 4,000 yards this season and he has 32 touchdown passes and has led the team to be one of the most productive passing teams in the nation. East Carolina ranks 10th in the nation in passing yards per game with 331 yards per contest and the team is also ranked 11th nationally in scoring with over 40 points per game and that makes this matchup one that could be very explosive, as Ohio has some solid offensive players as well, including at quarterback with senior Tyler Tettleton. Carolina comes in after losing on the road against Marshall and that came after five straight wins and they have a 9-3 record overall this season and 6-4 within their conference.
Check here for the ESPN stream of the game between Ohio and East Carolina.
The Pirates have been a streaky team all season and they have a nice win against North Carolina on the road and they also got an impressive win against NC State a couple weeks ago as well and they will take those nice performances into the bowl game for motivation. The team has scored over 50 points multiple times this season and the Bobcats defense will have to play well to keep the Pirates back in the passing game, especially with the way Carden has played this season. The team comes into the game ranked 51st in defense and they are gaining over 120 yards on the ground per game.
Carden had a rough game in the last loss with three picks and in his best game this season he had five touchdowns against UAB and over his previous three games before the loss he had 13 touchdowns and just two picks and apart from the three, he tossed just two over the five weeks before that. The Bobcats almost made noise in the BCS last season and this year they lost a tough game to open the season against Louisville and ended up 7-5 and just 4-4 in the MAC.
The Bobcats lost three of the final four games of the season apart from a win against UMass and the team also had a nice win over Akron as well as Miami of Ohio and now they will face off against the Pirates. The team is scoring just under 30 points per game and they are averaging over 350 yards per contest. The team finished third in their division in the MAC and Tettleton comes in with 20 scores and just nine picks this season and in the last two games he has three touchdowns. Tettleton will have to play well for the Bobcats to have a chance to win.