SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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Why South Florida will win
- It’s time to get rid of our illusions about Syracuse. Dino Babers isn’t going to execute an immediate turn-around like he did at Eastern Illinois, (when he took a team that had won two games in four years and won a conference title and went to FCS playoffs in his first year). This is a much harder rebuilding job that is going to come in stages and those stages will include some future recruiting classes. Also the degree of difficult is greater because he’s in what, (this year anyway) is the strongest division of any conference in the country, with two teams favored to make the national playoff and a third that appears to be just as good. Notre Dame could be a top 10 team and Pitt and South Florida could be Top 25 teams. We will not be. This is a very tough row to hoe right now and Baber’s road to success is going to look an awful lot like Art Briles at Baylor even if he achieves it: 4 wins, 4 wins, 7 wins then 10, etc. Like I said in my SU preview: we need to have 20-20 vision, not 2016 vision.
- It’s also time we got over our illusions about South Florida. They were one of those schools that stunned us into the reality of our reduced status in the last decade with a series of humiliating defeats to a school that didn’t even a football team until 1997: 2005 0-27; 2006 10-27; 2007 10-41; 2008 13-45; 2009 20-34; 2011 17-37. Doug Marrone finally beat them a couple of times and then we moved to the ACC, so they became irrelevant to us. Their program seemed to deflate in the meantime: After five straight winning seasons and some high national rankings from 2006-2010, they slipped 5-7, 3-9, 2-10, and 4-8. They seemed to have shot their bolt. They tried to make it in big time football and it didn’t work.
I was actually pleased we’d scheduled them again because now we can get some payback. My pal Accurater was worried about last year’s game when he invited me over. But he’s a Cubs fan so he’s always worried. They were 7-21 under Willie Taggart, who was about to be fired. We were 3-1 with only loss a competitive one against 8th ranked LSU when we had to use our 5th string quarterback, Zach Mahoney. Now Eric Dungey was back and with Jordan Fredericks, Erv Phillips, Brisley Estime and Steve Ismael, we were going to light up scoreboards. It was 2006 all over again as the Bulls ran all over us, 24-45 and began a 9-2 stretch in which they’ve out-scored their opponents 444-239 ((40-22). Their only losses have bene to teams that had a combined record of 23-4. We caught them just as they were about to lift off into the college football stratosphere again. South Florida has always been a sleeping giant. Both they and Central Florida are large state schools, (36 and 54 thousand undergraduates, respectively) in great recruiting areas, (Tampa and Orlando), and they are both trying to do what Florida State, a girls’ school until 1947 with ‘only’ 32,000 undergrads in a much smaller city in a more remote location, (Tallahassee), did in the 60’s and 70’s- rise from obscurity to a football powerhouse. They’ve had some setbacks but are back at it.
Most of us have classified them among the “50-50 games that could go either way this year. I’ve posted that I thought it was interesting that we began the season with a three game home stand with a team we are supposed to beat, (Colgate), a team we are supposed to lose to, (Louisville, and a team on our level, (South Florida). Well, Vegas doesn’t see this game as being against a team on our level. They had Louisville as a 16 point favorite and now have USF as a 14 ½ point favorite. Indeed, in reviewing this game I have as hard a time imaging why this would be different from the Louisville game than imagining why Syracuse would win.
- Dino Babers on his show last night : “If Lamar Jackson is “Hurricane Jackson”, then Quinton Flowers must be “Typhoon” Flowers. Although I’d like to think the man upstairs didn’t make two people like Lamar.” Last year Lamar Jackson passed for 1840 yards and 12 TDs, (with 8 interceptions) and ran for 960 yards and 11 TDs. Quinton Flowers passed for 2296 yards and 22TDs, (with 8 interceptions), and ran for 991 yards and 12 TDs. So far this year Jackson has passed for 697 yards and 7TDs (with 1 interception) and run for 318 yards and 6TDs. Flowers has passed for 528 yards and 6TDs (with no interceptions) and run for 99 yards and 2 scores. Flowers does not quite have Jackson’s speed and hasn’t run as much this year but otherwise, it’s hard to tell them apart. I heard a radio interview with a writer who covers South Florida who said that the biggest difference between Flowers this year is that “he’s really connecting with his wide receivers on long patterns which he throws with great accuracy.” Off of last week and the injuries to Juwan Dowels and Antwan Cordy, we don’t seem to be in a positon to do much about that.
- Marion Mack is coming back for this game. Isn’t that nice of him? Mack, (great name for a powerful, fast running back), ran for 184 yards and two TDs on us last year. And if he’s still not quite right after a concussion protocal, they have the similar Darius Tice and D’Ernest Johnson, with similar builds and skills and numbers over the first two games. In fact, USF is averaging 5.6 yards per carry.
- And they have a top receiver in Rodney Adams who had 45 catches for 822 yards and 9 scores last year. His former high school teammate, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, transferred in from NC State after catching 44 for them two years ago. He’s “6-3 210 and can overpower and out-jump defenders.” (Lindys) In a more conservative offense than ours, (because they can actually run the ball) those two have 15 catches for 237 yards and 2 scores this year, with more on the way.
- Defensively 5 of their top 6 tacklers are back. And they were +10 in turnovers, having forced 25 of them. They run a 4-2-5 scheme and the “2” are both excellent: Augie Sanchez and Nigel Harris. They have only one returning lineman, but he’s a big one: 6-1 305 Deadrain Senat. (Deadrin?) Four of the five D-backs return, with cornerback Deatrick Nichols being the best. (Deatrick?) ESPN interviewed an opposing coach who said “They attack the football and play with a lot of speed, effort and aggression.”
- 96 of their 106 players are from the state of Florida, probably many of them from the Tampa area. We have 14 players form the state of New York. If that doesn’t illustrate the problem, nothing does. They have to walk done the street to recruit players. And many of their players are the kind of guys we used to get from Florida before USF took up the sport. The others are better than that. They probably have a better athlete and a faster guy at almost every position.
- Willie Taggart was asked about our “Orange is the new fast” offense. The good news is that he didn’t think it was illegal. Hopefully their defenders won’t have fainting spells. The bad news is that he thinks it’s fun and said that “We do it, too, as do several teams in our conference.” That’s the point I was making at the beginning of my SU preview: we should have done this years ago, when it was original. Now everybody is doing some version of a hurry-up offense – and they are used to defending against it, too. It just doesn’t give the advantage we once would have had. We waited too long.
- It’s time to get rid of our illusions about Syracuse. Dino Babers isn’t going to execute an immediate turn-around like he did at Eastern Illinois, (when he took a team that had won two games in four years and won a conference title and went to FCS playoffs in his first year). This is a much harder rebuilding job that is going to come in stages and those stages will include some future recruiting classes. Also the degree of difficult is greater because he’s in what, (this year anyway) is the strongest division of any conference in the country, with two teams favored to make the national playoff and a third that appears to be just as good. Notre Dame could be a top 10 team and Pitt and South Florida could be Top 25 teams. We will not be. This is a very tough row to hoe right now and Baber’s road to success is going to look an awful lot like Art Briles at Baylor even if he achieves it: 4 wins, 4 wins, 7 wins then 10, etc. Like I said in my SU preview: we need to have 20-20 vision, not 2016 vision.
- It’s also time we got over our illusions about South Florida. They were one of those schools that stunned us into the reality of our reduced status in the last decade with a series of humiliating defeats to a school that didn’t even a football team until 1997: 2005 0-27; 2006 10-27; 2007 10-41; 2008 13-45; 2009 20-34; 2011 17-37. Doug Marrone finally beat them a couple of times and then we moved to the ACC, so they became irrelevant to us. Their program seemed to deflate in the meantime: After five straight winning seasons and some high national rankings from 2006-2010, they slipped 5-7, 3-9, 2-10, and 4-8. They seemed to have shot their bolt. They tried to make it in big time football and it didn’t work.
I was actually pleased we’d scheduled them again because now we can get some payback. My pal Accurater was worried about last year’s game when he invited me over. But he’s a Cubs fan so he’s always worried. They were 7-21 under Willie Taggart, who was about to be fired. We were 3-1 with only loss a competitive one against 8th ranked LSU when we had to use our 5th string quarterback, Zach Mahoney. Now Eric Dungey was back and with Jordan Fredericks, Erv Phillips, Brisley Estime and Steve Ismael, we were going to light up scoreboards. It was 2006 all over again as the Bulls ran all over us, 24-45 and began a 9-2 stretch in which they’ve out-scored their opponents 444-239 ((40-22). Their only losses have bene to teams that had a combined record of 23-4. We caught them just as they were about to lift off into the college football stratosphere again. South Florida has always been a sleeping giant. Both they and Central Florida are large state schools, (36 and 54 thousand undergraduates, respectively) in great recruiting areas, (Tampa and Orlando), and they are both trying to do what Florida State, a girls’ school until 1947 with ‘only’ 32,000 undergrads in a much smaller city in a more remote location, (Tallahassee), did in the 60’s and 70’s- rise from obscurity to a football powerhouse. They’ve had some setbacks but are back at it.
Most of us have classified them among the “50-50 games that could go either way this year. I’ve posted that I thought it was interesting that we began the season with a three game home stand with a team we are supposed to beat, (Colgate), a team we are supposed to lose to, (Louisville, and a team on our level, (South Florida). Well, Vegas doesn’t see this game as being against a team on our level. They had Louisville as a 16 point favorite and now have USF as a 14 ½ point favorite. Indeed, in reviewing this game I have as hard a time imaging why this would be different from the Louisville game than imagining why Syracuse would win.
- Dino Babers on his show last night : “If Lamar Jackson is “Hurricane Jackson”, then Quinton Flowers must be “Typhoon” Flowers. Although I’d like to think the man upstairs didn’t make two people like Lamar.” Last year Lamar Jackson passed for 1840 yards and 12 TDs, (with 8 interceptions) and ran for 960 yards and 11 TDs. Quinton Flowers passed for 2296 yards and 22TDs, (with 8 interceptions), and ran for 991 yards and 12 TDs. So far this year Jackson has passed for 697 yards and 7TDs (with 1 interception) and run for 318 yards and 6TDs. Flowers has passed for 528 yards and 6TDs (with no interceptions) and run for 99 yards and 2 scores. Flowers does not quite have Jackson’s speed and hasn’t run as much this year but otherwise, it’s hard to tell them apart. I heard a radio interview with a writer who covers South Florida who said that the biggest difference between Flowers this year is that “he’s really connecting with his wide receivers on long patterns which he throws with great accuracy.” Off of last week and the injuries to Juwan Dowels and Antwan Cordy, we don’t seem to be in a positon to do much about that.
- Marion Mack is coming back for this game. Isn’t that nice of him? Mack, (great name for a powerful, fast running back), ran for 184 yards and two TDs on us last year. And if he’s still not quite right after a concussion protocal, they have the similar Darius Tice and D’Ernest Johnson, with similar builds and skills and numbers over the first two games. In fact, USF is averaging 5.6 yards per carry.
- And they have a top receiver in Rodney Adams who had 45 catches for 822 yards and 9 scores last year. His former high school teammate, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, transferred in from NC State after catching 44 for them two years ago. He’s “6-3 210 and can overpower and out-jump defenders.” (Lindys) In a more conservative offense than ours, (because they can actually run the ball) those two have 15 catches for 237 yards and 2 scores this year, with more on the way.
- Defensively 5 of their top 6 tacklers are back. And they were +10 in turnovers, having forced 25 of them. They run a 4-2-5 scheme and the “2” are both excellent: Augie Sanchez and Nigel Harris. They have only one returning lineman, but he’s a big one: 6-1 305 Deadrain Senat. (Deadrin?) Four of the five D-backs return, with cornerback Deatrick Nichols being the best. (Deatrick?) ESPN interviewed an opposing coach who said “They attack the football and play with a lot of speed, effort and aggression.”
- 96 of their 106 players are from the state of Florida, probably many of them from the Tampa area. We have 14 players form the state of New York. If that doesn’t illustrate the problem, nothing does. They have to walk done the street to recruit players. And many of their players are the kind of guys we used to get from Florida before USF took up the sport. The others are better than that. They probably have a better athlete and a faster guy at almost every position.
- Willie Taggart was asked about our “Orange is the new fast” offense. The good news is that he didn’t think it was illegal. Hopefully their defenders won’t have fainting spells. The bad news is that he thinks it’s fun and said that “We do it, too, as do several teams in our conference.” That’s the point I was making at the beginning of my SU preview: we should have done this years ago, when it was original. Now everybody is doing some version of a hurry-up offense – and they are used to defending against it, too. It just doesn’t give the advantage we once would have had. We waited too long.
