ANOTHER DOWN WEEK FOR THE SEC
Tuesday 9/10/02
This week you will hear some SEC coaches talk about “getting down to business” and “starting the real season”. I guess that is right but they could probably add “it can’t come soon enough”. I don’t think the SEC can talk about being the best this year after another week of humiliating losses. Florida was whipped by the defending national champion Miami Hurricanes. Losing to Miami is certainly nothing to be ashamed of but to be #6 in the country and favored over Miami and then get humiliated on your own home field which has been the toughest place in college football to play over the last decade… That hurts. I will only make one reference to Steve Spurrier here. The key point in the game was when Florida was only a TD behind and had first and goal. Rex Grossman then threw a interception that Miami returned 90-something yards for a TD and that broke the game wide open. All I will say is that if Grossman had thrown that pass with Spurrier there he probably would have run back to the Miami sideline….
I will finally give Miami some respect though. For years I have had no respect for the Hurricanes because of their pathetic schedules but to come in and whip a good Florida team in the Swamp with or without Spurrier is pretty impressive. Plus they finally play a genuine hard schedule this year playing Florida, Tennessee and Florida St plus Virginia Tech in-conference. Elsewhere South Carolina was shut-out in the second half and beaten by Virginia. It is starting to look like there will be a bit of “returning to normalcy” this year for the Gamecocks. Only Bama gave a good account of themselves but in the end it was still a loss. Coach Dennis Francione was able to make some great adjustments at half time after an awful start. This game was almost 2 different games with Oklahoma dominating the first half and Bama dominating the second half. However Bama fans still have to be disappointed as all they had to do was prevent an Oklahoma offense they had shutout the entire second half from going 80 yards for a score with a little over 2 minutes left…
So currently after 2 weeks the SEC is: 0-2 vs. Pac-10, 0-2 vs. Big East, 1-2 vs. ACC and 0-1 vs. Big-12. The ONLY win the SEC has posted against a major conference was Georgia’s narrow escape vs. Clemson which could have easily been a loss. Not too good, not too good at all… It looks like the Tennessee Vols are the SEC’s last hope for a major out-of-conference win. The Vols play Miami on November 9. However there is some good news, the SEC is 3-0 vs. Conference USA so the world is not coming to an end yet. However at least one of those wins was Kentucky beating a ranked Louisville team. BTW I once again have to give kudos out to the Wildcats again this week. They blew out UTEP this week and scored over 70 points. So what? UTEP sucks right? Right of course but a close look at the box score shows something very interesting… UK only threw 19 passes for only 227 yards but they RAN for over 350 yards (!!!) as Guy Morriss continues to make this a real football team. And that is pretty impressive to me after watching what a circus Hal Mumme turned it into…
In other news… There now has to be some genuine concern in Baton Rouge as LSU only managed barely 100 yards passing against The Citadel. Ouch. Starter Matt Mauck only went 8-18 with 90 yards. However it looked like Marcus Randall got in the game. He was doing very well in the spring till he blew out his knee. I look for him to take over the starting job very soon as Mauck continues to struggle.