Sept. 4, 2000

Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Dave Campbell appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.

Greg Cicero gave himself "a C" for his first performance in a Baylor uniform. "I grade my performance as a C," Baylor's spotlighted transfer quarterback told reporters in the locker room after the Bears had defeated the North Texas Mean Green on a steamy night at Fouts Field. "I thought I could have done better. I got the job done, and in school you call that average and you get a C."

If Greg were going to grade the Bears' entire performance, maybe he would want to give the defense better than a C, the offense a C or thereabouts, and the kicking game a C-minus.

But, hey, when he looked at the final reading on the scoreboard, he would have been like the Baylor fans who were there. All of them would have seen those scoreboard lights which said "Baylor 20, North Texas 7" and uttered a heartfelt "beautiful."

No, it wasn't always pretty. Yes, there were a couple of times when it was close to ugly. But when your team has not won a game since last Oct. 2 (Baylor 23, North Texas 10 in Waco), when it has not won a game on the road since nosing out Fresno State, 37-35, on Sept. 6 of 1997 (16 road games ago), when it has not won a season opener since struggling past Louisiana Tech in Shreveport on Sept. 7, 1996, just about any ol' victory is beautiful.

WHEN UNIVERSITY OF North Texas officials crowned the evening immediately after the game with a spectacular fireworks display, Baylor coaches, players and fans must have thought it was for them rather than for UNT fans for turning out in such numbers. The announced attendance was 28,315, the largest in Fouts Field history.

"This victory is something we can build on," said Bruin coach Kevin Steele, and it goes without saying that the building will have to be even faster than fast because well-armed, ambitious and hungry Minnesota, a rising power in the Big Ten, is next up on the Baylor schedule.

That game will kick off at 11:30 a.m. at Baylor's Floyd Casey Stadium on Sept. 16, and by then Minnesota is expected to have two victories under its belt. The Golden Gophers of Glen Mason are expected to be 2-0 by then. They belted Louisiana-Monroe, 47-10, amid the cool comfort of the Minneapolis Metrodome this past Saturday, and they are heavily favored to do likewise to Ohio University in that same arena this coming Saturday while Baylor prepares for its hot rendezvous with -- well, with whatever awaits this young but improved Bruin team.

INCIDENTALLY, this will be the first appearance in Waco of a Big Ten football team since 1971 when the Bill Beall-coached Bears, of all people, defeated Indiana, 10-0. Defense, defense. Defense made the difference for the Bears in the Denton oven (it was 102 degrees at kickoff time). The Bruin offense could score only one touchdown while messing up four other opportunities that carried inside the North Texas 30 (thus having to settle for four field goal attempts, two of which were good).

BUT THANKS TO THAT bristling defense, which scored one of Baylor's two touchdowns itself, and the cool play of Cicero, who kept his composure when it counted most, the Bears were able to ride back home as 13 point winners rather than the 5-point victors the oddsmakers had predicted before kickoff time.

Linebacker Kris Micheaux scored Baylor's second touchdown of the evening, scooping up a North Texas fumble after cornerback Daniel Wilturner had stripped the ball out of receiver George Marshall's hands. Micheaux grabbed the loose ball at the Mean Green 14-yard line and rumbled untouched to the end zone with 4:47 left to play in the first half.

Earlier, senior tailback Elijah Burkins came off the bench to give the rather lethargic Bruin offense a real lift with his explosive running which culminated in a 4-yard touchdown run early in the second period.

A little later transfer kicker Adam Stiles kicked a 24-yard field goal to make it a 10-0 game, Micheaux's run made it 17-0 at halftime, and Stiles kicked a 46-yarder in the third quarter to give the Bears a 20-point advantage.

NORTH TEXAS THEN turned to true freshman Scott Hall for the spark it needed at quarterback, and Hall fired the Mean Green 80 yards in 9 plays for the team's only touchdown. A 22-yard completion to wideout LaDarrin McLane got them started and a 29-yard strike to wide receiver Byron Curtis put the ball on the Baylor 5-yard line. Fullback Aaron Holly scored the touchdown from the 2-yard line two plays later.

Earlier, in the second quarter, North Texas used another big aerial strike -- Richard Bridges to Curtis for 51 yards -- to move the ball to the Baylor 14. But the Bruin defense refused to give ground and North Texas kicker Jason Ball missed a 26-yard field goal, his first miss in 10 tries.

Yes, the Baylor secondary did give up some big gainers while permitting 11 completions in 20 attempts. "It wasn't that we were covering the wrong guy or in the wrong place. North Texas just made the play and we didn't," said Steele.

One obvious culprit was Baylor's celebrated senior cornerback Gary Baxter, just nominated a few days earlier among 40 candidates nationwide for the Jim Thorpe Award (for nation's best defensive back). But having been beaten on one long pass and having dropped an interception that was right in his hands, Baxter now has some ground to make up.

The kicking game also was a disappointment -- four field goal attempts, two through the uprights, one well off target and one blocked. And Stiles only averaged 29.8 yards on his four punts, and one of them was an 8-yarder!

APART FROM ITS SCORING drive and its unproductive drive in the second quarter, the Mean Green seldom threatened. Its only other dangerous march, 31 yards in 9 plays to the Baylor 24, ended with a fumble that wound up in the hands of Baylor defensive end Charles Mann.

North Texas finished with 11 first downs, 106 yards rushing and 265 yards overall. Baylor didn't have a whole lot more -- 19 first downs, 107 yards rushing, 325 yards overall -- but the Bears had a whopping advantage in two tell-tale departments: penalties and turnovers.

Baylor had zero turnovers (unusual for a season opener), North Texas had 4. Baylor was guilty of only two infractions resulting in only 15 lost yards, North Texas was found guilty 11 times for 90 yards.

Cicero checked off (changed the play) at the line of scrimmage "about half the time" and completed 17 of his 28 passes for 213 yards with no interceptions. And he had three other throws that receivers dropped.

"To be his first college game, I thought he played pretty well. And he will play better. He was angry with himself," said Steele. "He's very competitive. And he got us out of some bad plays (with his checkoffs) and into some good ones."

It is the INSIDER's opinion that the Bears probably would have had a difficult time of it Thursday night, playing on the road before an emotional and hostile crowd, if they had been having to go with last year's quarterbacks. Or with last year's defense.

"IF THEY GAVE OUT a game ball, it would have to go to our defense," said Cicero. "They have us opportunities to make it much more of a blowout than it really was."

Among the missed opportunities:

On their first possession of the game the Bears were able to start operations at the North Texas 46, thanks to a 16-yard punt return by Andra Fuller. But three plays only gained 5 yards and they had to punt.

Second possession: A 32-yard return by Fuller left them in possession at midfield and they drove down to the NTS 17 before misfiring and having to turn to Stiles for a 34-yard field goal attempt. His kick was well off target.

After Burkins had replaced Darrell Bush at tailback, giving the offense an explosive quickness it has been so conspicuously lacking, the Bears drove 65 yards in six plays for their first touchdown, and then on their next possession they drove 73 yards in 13 plays to the NTS 7-yard line. Stymied there, they asked Stiles for a 24-yard three-pointer and that time his kick was true.

Another notable foulup came in the fourth quarter. With the scoreboard by now reading 20-7, safety Samir Al-Amin intercepted a Mean Green pass and returned it 22 yards to the NTS 22. But the Baylor offense turned up only blanks and Stiles' field goal attempt from the 22 was blocked.

MAYBE STEELE WOULD HAVE welcomed a blowout more than the 20-7 score he got. He wasn't saying. He did say this after this past Saturday's scored had been posted: "After watching Penn State (lose to Toledo), beating North Texas doesn't look so bad."

What the coach especially liked other than the victorious scoreboard was the play of his defensive front seven. Unlike last season (and several of the previous ones), they made most of the tackles rather than the Bears in the secondary, which is how it is supposed to be.

Final defensive stats taken from the coaches' own grading of the game tape showed linebackers Kris Micheaux with 13 tackles (8 solo stops), Anthony Simmons with 10 (4 solos), Derrick Cash with 8 (6 solos), tackle Kevin Stevenson and end Charles Mann with 7 each, linebacker McKinley Bowie with 6, end Aaron Lard with 5 and end Eric Clay with 4.

After looking at the game tape, Steele noted the Bears now can build on what they did defensively because they don't have things that must be completely corrected. The players were in the correct position to make the play, now "it's a case of doing it better." The integrity of the defense held up, "and when you don't break down the integrity of the defense, you can make the right call," he said.

The fact that the Bears' top six tacklers were all members of the front seven pleased him mightily. Last year, three defensive backs usually were among the top six in every game. This year the linemen were keeping the opposition's blockers occupied, leaving the linebackers free to make stops.

SOMETHING ELSE that probably pleased him even more is that Simmons, Cash and Lard are redshirt freshmen who were playing in their first college game, and Stevenson and Mann are only sophomores. Another redshirt freshman, end Joe Simmons, had some big plays (like holding his position and turning a reverse inside, resulting in a 2-yard loss for the Mean Green). So did redshirt safety Matt Amendola (an interception and 40-yard return on the final play of the first half).

All those are young Bears who are going to get better.

Steele said he hesitated to single out players yet, but he did note that Stevenson "for lack of a better term, played like a real Big 12 player. When you can take your guy and drive him back to the football, you're doing something. And he was going against their best offensive lineman," he said.

And then there was the play of the linebackers as a whole -- Micheaux, Anthony Simmons, Cash, Bowie. Speaking of Cash, he said, "Boy, that guy made some plays. He made some things happen that enabled Micheaux to make plays." He said Cash, Lard, Joe Simmons and Anthony Simmons surpassed what a redshirt freshman usually does. And likewise Amendola.

Actually, North Texas gained 102 yards on just three pass completions, which means the Mean Green was limited to 163 yards for its other 54 plays. That's an average of 3 yards per play, and that represents dramatic improvement over 1999 figures. But of course we can only wait and see how good North Texas' offense is before making any final judgements.

OFFENSIVELY, STEELE liked what he saw of Cicero's competitiveness, he said Cedric Fields' play in the offensive line is going to get him in the rotation, he noted fullback Chris Schoessow (5-11, 226, junior) "was in his first college game ever, and he's going to play a lot more," and he had nice things to say about Burkins and the running of Bush in the second half.

At the end of the first quarter Bush had a mere 13 yards on five carries, and at halftime he only had a net of 11 yards on 8 tries. And by then Burkins had 44 yards on 6 carries and had scored a touchdown.

Bush complained of not feeling well at the half. Steele said he told him at the half that if Elijah keeps running like he has been running, you're going to start feeling better in a hurry." And he did, winding up with 56 yards on 13 carries.

Eight Bruin receivers caught passes (Cicero became a ninth receiver when he caught one of his deflected passes himself), and the most productive were sophs Reggie Newhouse (5 catches for 103 yards) and Larry O'Steen (3 for 59). But true freshman John Martin was the one who left a lot of fans talking. "You wait and see," one former Baylor football standout told me after the game, "by the time the season ends, John Martin will be the best receiver out there."

MARTIN HAD TWO catches for 22 yards against North Texas, and one of his grabs, a 15-yard catch that he flat took away from a Mean Green defender at the NTS 9-yard line, was the real thing. "John played like a seasoned veteran," marveled Steele. "For a true freshman to go out there and run the routes he did and make the catches he did, that's very important." Out of uniform, Martin looks like just another kid fresh off the campus. "But put him in a uniform and get him out there, and he looks like he belongs," said Steele.

Incidentally, it was on that tough catch that Martin made at the NTS 9 that Cicero went down under a punishing Mean Green rush and didn't get up for awhile. He wobbled to the sideline, Baylor fans held their breath, and Mike Odum took his place and got the Bears down to the 7 before Stiles kicked his 24-yard field goal.

As the last minute was ticking off the clock, another receiver, Newhouse, hauled a Cicero pass 36 yards to the Mean Green 4-yard line. The Bears had time to run off two plays, probably plenty of time to score. Instead, Cicero twice took a knee as time ran out. Baylor fans cheered and the players grinned, temembering last year and the UNLV disaster.

"Personally, I would have run the ball. But the coach made a good decision," said Micheaux.

Big Kris was disappointed that North Texas had scored even a point, but he was quick to agree that a win is a win is a win, and he wasn't about to second guess his coach. After all, last year in the UNLV game, when the Baylor quarterback did not take a knee and the team paid for it with a last-play fumble that was turned into a UNLV 100-yard return and victory, the Bears were just trying to make a statement. In this game they had already made one.

Editor's Note: Articles such as this one by Dave Campbell appear in each edition of the Baylor Bear Insider Report, available upon membership in the Baylor Bear Foundation. For information on joining the Bear Foundation, click here.