After a Week Three win against Morgan State, Ohio coach Tim Albin sat down with the press for his weekly press conference. Here is what The Post learned from the brief conversation.
Just another game
Anyone following college football would circle Kentucky as the most challenging game on Ohio’s schedule. The Wildcats come from the Southeastern Conference, arguably the strongest conference in the country. However, Albin doesn’t let their conference's reputation affect his job.
Albin treats Kentucky as just another game on Ohio’s schedule, a game that Ohio can win.
Schools around the Mid-American Conference have already pulled off upsets early on this season. Northern Illinois shocked the college football world with its victory against Notre Dame and Toledo has a Power Four victory against Mississippi State. However, Albin doesn’t plan to use these games as inspiration for his team – he has all the inspiration he needs from the storied history of Ohio football pulling off these upsets itself.
Quieting the noise
Ohio will be up against the most hostile environment it has faced all season when it runs out of the tunnel this weekend at Kroger Field in Lexington, Kentucky. Any time Ohio’s offense takes the field, the crowd is sure to play a factor. A factor that Albin and the Bobcats are taking extra time to prepare for.
Albin shared that in the off-season, the team had speakers installed in Walter Fieldhouse as a way to prepare for crowd noise. The Ohio offense will practice several days inside the Fieldhouse with crowd noise blaring in from the speakers to simulate a road game environment.
In Ohio’s sole road game this season against Syracuse, the team struggled to score inside the red zone – the loudest part of the field. Albin admitted after that game that he did not have his team prepared for the noise. He assured that a lack of preparation would not be a problem this time.
Injuries
It is a new and welcomed change that Albin provided few updates on injuries during this week's press conference. This is mainly because Ohio remained relatively uninjured against Morgan State.
Roman Parodie was the only player mentioned regarding availability, and Albin thinks he will likely play against Kentucky this weekend. Parodie’s availability was affected by an unexplained event off the field, which kept him off the field against Morgan State.
Additionally, Albin did not give an update on safety Adonis Williams Jr., who hasn’t been on the field since Week One. Williams has been a “game-time decision” in each of the last two weeks and will likely have a similar status against Kentucky.
Following the Morgan State game, Albin referred to Williams as the best safety in the MAC. Ohio will look to get Williams back to slow down the Kentucky offense.
An update on the quarterback situation
One of the most surprising moments of Ohio’s entire season up to this point was seeing redshirt junior quarterback Nick Poulos come off the sidelines to start the second half of Ohio’s win against Morgan State.
Poulos was named the backup on the depth chart heading into Week One as the transfer from El Camino College beat out returning quarterbacks Jacob Winters and Callum Wither for the backup job.
The junior college product had a great first drive getting the offense back on track scoring a touchdown in the third quarter, after starting quarterback Parker Navarro had three interceptions all coming in the second quarter.
There were questions surrounding the quarterback situation heading into this week against Kentucky, but Albin cleared up all confusion by announcing Parker Navarro as his starter this week.
"He's our starter,” Albin said when referring to Navarro. “The quarterback position has got to produce, and we felt like making a change we when we did.”
It is clear that Navarro is still the team’s starter, but the reason for his benching against Morgan State was due to production, and Navarro will look to produce better this week in Lexington.
Daunting Kentucky Defense
Kentucky has had an interesting start to their season. With new transfer quarterback Brock Vandagriff joining the team from Georgia, the expectation was for the Wildcats to have an elite offense.
In reality, this season the defense has been the reason for Kentucky being close in games, much like its 13-12 loss this past Saturday against No. 2 Georgia.
The Wildcats' defense completely shut down the Bulldogs en route to nearly pulling off an upset over the college football behemoth from Athens, Georgia. The defense has stood out to Albin, who made sure to mention them in his press conference.
“I don't see a weakness. Without breaking them down, I don't see a weakness in their defense," said Albin. “We're going to have huge matchup problems.”
Hopefully for Ohio, Navarro and the offense can get it back on track this weekend against a vaunted Kentucky defense to pull off a shocker against an SEC foe.
