THIS SHOULD BE REBELS’ BEST CHANCE
Tuesday 9/3/02
Well you sure do learn a lot more about teams from one weekend of games than you from 1000 pages of previews. I think we learned that while the SEC West can maybe claim to be the most “competitive” division in college football it certainly can’t claim to be one of the best. Auburn and Miss St got rolled by the Pac-10. Defending SEC champ LSU got whipped by Big East biggie Va Tech. Bama got a scare from Sun Belt power Middle Tenn St. And finally you have Ole Miss and Arkansas who are chickening out of playing any big game out of the conference whatsoever other than Ole Miss playing Texas Tech. After one game I really don’t think any of these teams have a chance to beat whoever wins the SEC East in Atlanta.
As for the East, again I think it is Tennessee and Florida. Georgia narrowly avoided an upset against a decent Clemson team. The Dawgs do look pretty good but still don’t look any closer to Tennessee or Florida in my opinion. The QB situation also got worse as starter David Greene played extremely tight the whole night. DJ Shockley made some big plays and with many more games like that will probably unseat Greene. However if that occurs what happens when he has a bad game? Georgia is good but I would be very surprised to them beat Tennessee or Florida. Tennessee looked very impressive even without star wideout Kelly Washington. Cedric Houston laid his claim to the TB job with a 100 yard performance and the Tennessee defense dominated the game.
Meanwhile in Gainesville Ron Zook had a successful start. Now it was against UAB but I thought there was something very important seen in this game and that was the rebirth of a Gator running attack. During Spurrier’s best four years at Florida, Danny Wuerffel got all the press but Eric Rhett and Fred Taylor were also a big part of those championships and both guys were 1000 yard rushers in the NFL. After that Spurrier really seemed to get away from the running game and it really hurt him last year although Ernest Graham was hurt a lot. If Florida can run the ball along with Grossman and Jacobs, look out… Elsewhere in the East, South Carolina had an unsatisfying opening again New Mexico and Vandy, ah Vandy was as always the worst-looking SEC team as they got complete annihilated by Ga Tech. The disturbing thing about South Carolina was their usually stout defense gave up over 400 total yards.
The only surprise in the East was Kentucky taking out a ranked Louisville team. I tell you, Kentucky coach Guy Moriss deserves some credit. The guy is doing some coaching. He, at the very least, has Kentucky playing real football. After a decade of Bill Curry and Hal Mumme, Kentucky is playing some SEC football again. Now they still don’t have the weapons but I think they are at least doing the very best they can do. Moriss ran the ball 42 times and passed just 27 times completely erasing the circus Hal Mumme used to put on. Kentucky dominated the time of possession by almost 10 minutes. Kentucky went out and ran the ball and played defense holding Louisville’s vaunted passing attack to under 200 yards on 14 of 39 passing. Again, big kudos to Moriss and Kentucky this week and mark it down these guys will knock off a few SEC teams this year. It probably won’t be Tennessee or Florida but everyone else better watch out…
Back to the West… It is only the opening weekend but after watching it I believe this is the Ole Miss Rebels best chance to finally get to Atlanta. They are the only team from the West that has not gone yet. It also appears they are the only team with a good QB. LSU’s Matt Mauck did not look very good. Bama’s Tyler Watts is limited in what he can do passing. Miss St’s starting QB was suspended. Auburn’s QB-position looks the same as last year with no big improvement in sight. Arkansas had one of the worst offenses in the NCAA last year and have the same guys back at QB. Ole Miss’ Eli Manning is by far the best QB in the West and that is a huge advantage. It should be a great race in the West that comes down to the very last week. Till next week…