Cincinnati’s Return Home Spoiled by Thundering Herd

After being out on the road for three-straight weeks, it was not ridiculous to think the Cincinnati Bearcats would benefit from a return home.

It looks ridiculous now, though.

With the home crowd at Nippert Stadium behind them, the Bearcats (2-3) laid an egg against the Marshall Thundering Herd, falling 38-21. Even that 17-point margin of defeat doesn’t illustrate just how bad this game was.

Hayden Moore regressed in a major way, failing to complete many passes at all in the first half before racking up 211 total yards across the entire game, grabbing most of them in garbage time. Moore completed just 4-of-10 pass attempts in the first half as the Bearcats went into halftime down 24-0.

The running game didn’t help much either, as UC managed all of nine yards on the ground in first half. Gerrid Doaks ended up as the leading rusher, with 55 yards and a touchdown, but like Moore, most of that production came after the game was put away.

UC finished with 349 yards of total offense compared to Marshall’s 366, but three lost fumbles and bad play on third down and in the red zone crushed many drives, while Marshall just moved the ball as it pleased, especially in the first 30 minutes.

The Herd’s quarterback, Chase Litton, threw for 233 yards and four touchdowns, the majority going to Ryan Yurachek, who brought in three scores and finished with a game-high 77 receiving yards.

UC has lost back-to-back games and will next be in action against UCF at home next Saturday night.