CINCINNATI -- Tommy Tuberville wants the University of Cincinnati football team to get back to its roots when it comes to its offense. It's got one regular season game left to do so.
The Bearcats close out their regular season Saturday at noon at Paul Brown Stadium against Houston. There is plenty to play for, most notably a share of the American Athletic Conference title with Memphis and Central Florida. UC's season began with high expectations for an offense led by sophomore quarterback Gunner Kiel, and for the most part those expectations have been met. Tuberville has noticed some slippage, however, in recent weeks and he's pushing for Kiel & Co. to finish strong.
"We've been a little lackluster on offense the past two weeks, we're very basic," said Tuberville. "We're going to go back to the drawing board and open things up a little bit."
That could make for an entertaining finale as the Bearcats seek their seventh straight win.
Kiel is 180 yards shy of becoming just the fifth quarterback in program history to pass for 3,000 yards in a season and leads the American with 28 touchdown passes. He's thrown touchdown passes to nine different receivers and is three away from equaling Ben Mauk's school record 31 touchdown passes in 2007. He's battled a nagging rib injury, first suffered against Ohio State in late September, but has started every game.
Tuberville doesn't want anyone resting on laurels.
"I think he has gotten better over the course of the year, he is still a work in progress," said Tuberville. "There for about five or six games in the middle of the season he really had no chance to get better. He was just throwing it with his arm. He got beat up but the thing I think he learned was how to play with a little bit of pain and soreness, which he is going to have to do the whole time he plays football whether it's high school through the NFL. You've got to play hurt because you're going to get to get hit, you are susceptible to getting hit and we didn't disappoint him in his first year. He got banged around real good.
"I think we'll give him the benefit of the doubt by midseason if he did not play as well like he did early but he hasn't played well the last weeks."
Kiel has gone from a highly-heralded transfer from Notre Dame who hadn't played a game in three years to one of the best quarterbacks in college. He's taken his lumps but persevered and has his team on the verge of completing a remarkable turnaround from what once looked like a lost season.
Memphis wrapped up its season last week with a 41-10 win against Connecticut that left it 9-3 and 7-1 in the conference, its lone loss coming against Houston. Central Florida has identical overall and league records after it beat East Carolina 32-30 Thursday night on a 51-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass as time expired. The Golden Knights' lone loss was an inexplicable defeat at UConn.
The Bearcats would also be 9-3/7-1 by beating Houston. Their only loss in the league was against Memphis, a loss that came in the middle of a three-game losing streak in which UC's defense was giving up chunk play after chunk play and the offense couldn't help by either scoring enough to keep pace or sustain drives long enough to at least let defenders catch their breath.
The roles were reversed in last Saturday's 14-6 win at Temple. The point total equaled a season low, while the 255 yards gained and nine punts were both season lows for an offense that has averaged 453.9 yards a game, which still ranks 28th in the nation. Instead, a defense that gave up nearly 2,000 yards during that three-game losing streak kept an opponent out of the end zone for a second straight game, repeatedly turning away the Owls.
Now Kiel and the offense don't have to be the end-all, be-all for the Bearcats to win.
"Now if the offense has a three-and-out we tell them to get ready, that we've got their back," said linebacker Nick Temple, who was named the American Defensive Player of the Week after making 13 tackles, two sacks and three tackles for loss against Temple. "At first we didn't know what type of defense we were. We couldn't find our identity. We've finally found out what kind of defense we were. It came slow but it came right on time because we've still got a shot for the conference championship."
A league title would be UC's fifth in the last seven seasons.
UC will find out Sunday where it will play its bowl game.
