- USC 44 Oregon 10 - Nora and Victor were present at the Coliseum and enjoyed a terrific game as Southern California roared back from its stunning loss last week and crushed No. 23 Oregon 44-10 Saturday night. "This is exactly what we needed to do," USC coach Pete Carroll said. "This was exactly the game we were looking for to bounce back and get back on track. USC scored the game's final 41 points and avoided losing consecutive games for the first time since 2001, Pete Carroll's first year as coach. "These guys came out and played like crazy. This was a big moment for us."The "big moment" was keyed by quarterback Mark Sanchez, who had a so-so outing in the 27-21 loss at Corvallis that cost USC (3-1, 1-1) the No. 1 ranking, and by the Trojans' defense, which had been pushed around by the Beavers. Sanchez threw for 332 yards and three touchdowns in the Trojans' 598-yard offensive avalanche, and their defense held the Ducks (4-2, 2-1), the Pac-10's best rushing team coming in, to 60 yards on the ground and 239 overall. Oregon had been averaging 308 on the ground alone. Congratulations Trojans, Coast-to-Coast!
- Florida 38 Arkansas 7 - The score is somewhat misleading because Florida played a pretty boring game on offense for three quarters and then woke up from a fog of offensive mediocrity during the fourth quarter and said, "Wait a minute, aren't we supposed to be a BCS team????" We then proceeded to put points on the board, like we should have from the start. What's going on with Florida is horribly frustrating. Early in the season the theory was that we were "holding back" and not running any offense worthy of the name. Just winning with defense and special teams to save our offensive schemes and high-powered ways for the truly important games. Well, that nonsense caught up with us during the Ole Miss game last week. We let them hang around for four quarters and that foolishness got us a loss we should not have had. Well, next Saturday we got a real tough team coming to The Swamp. LSU is coming to town and we better come out of that tunnel breathing fire, hitting on all cylinders, firing everything we have from the get-go. If we don't, the season will truly be over and our offensive coordinator, Dan Mullen, will be coaching at St. Elsewhere.
- Georgetown 0 Colgate 0 - The Georgetown / Colgate game was cancelled because of norovirus on campus. That is the weirdest thing I've ever heard. I thought people got norovirus on cruise ships, not football fields. Oh, well.
- Oklahoma State 56 Texas A&M 28 - The Aggies were destroyed by Oklahoma State. What can I say. Sorry Aggiepete. Better luck next week.
- Michigan State 16 Iowa 13 - Pretty frustrating. Iowa passed up what could have been a tying field goal at the end and instead went for it on 4th and 1. Exactly like Florida last week against Ole Miss, Iowa didn't make it and lost on the road to the Spartans.
Other than a terrific victory by the Trojans (who also started slow) it was a horribly frustrating week for the
bloggers. Yeah, yeah Florida won by 31 points on the road. Beat the spread. But it really felt like a loss. Hope we all have a better week coming up. Except for
luisleon. I hope his Tigers have a terrible day at The Swamp. Four or five turnovers would be great. Can you help us out here
LouLion?
5 comments:
I agree with the notion that we have not seen the gator offense firing on all cylinders for any extended period yet. We have had flashes of brilliance, but we have become accustomed to 60 minute highlight reels. I will have to respectfully disagree with you on the part that we are entirely a team of caca. We DID have TWO players rush for over 100 yards (both freshmen) and wound up with nearly 300 yards rushing on the game, and a total of over 500 yards, AND the final score was 38-7 even having a masterful Brandon James TD yanked from the scoreboard for no good reason. Granted, Arkansas is not the best team this year, and a lot of those rushing yards came on 3 big plays - Most of Chase Daniels/Sam Bradfords "Heisman stats" come from 4 yard dump passes that turn into 77 yard TDs against north texas. I will not be as self loathing as my father, and give the boys in blue a pat on the back for giving us 1. a W for the books, 2. Covering the spread with room to spare (which i believe translates roughly into "performing better than expected" and 3. Giving us a preview (even if only in flashes) of what we are capable of against bigger and better opponents in high stakes games. This is a revenge game against LSU next week. Maybe we will be able to rub it in by converting 7 fourth downs and eating up 25 minutes on a single drive to put the final go ahead score on the board.....man that hurt. Urban didn't challenge the last one and i REAAAALLY think he should have (no disrespect to Hester, who was the key to converting all those 4th downs). Thats my rant for the day. See you all on the field.
Jason, I don't think the Gators are caca. I think we have awesome players. We should be and are, indeed, loaded with thoroughbreds. And in re LSU, from your lips to God's ears...
Nevertheless this has been a frustrating season. My beef is with the play calling coming from upstairs. We are the most predictable, boring team in football today bar none. EVERYONE knows what the next play is going to be and we don't need a playbook. The plays we've used so far can be written on a matchbook cover with room to spare. Tebow is falling asleep with boredom. Hand off to Harvin. Hand off to Harvin. Hand off to Harvin. Ooohh, I got! I got it!Great play!Hand off to Rainey. Oohh, it's third down, let's pass to Murphy. Oh, fourth and short. Tebow right. But go easy, son. Don't get hurt, son. It's not like this is an important game or anything. Yawn. How 'bout we pretend Spurrier's back and we throw a bomb into the end zone out of the box. We've got incredible speed. Any number of our horses can beat any of theirs. How 'bout some old-fashioned post patterns. How 'bout some excitement in the old Swamp. Hope we're saving it all for LSU. Hope I have to eat my words. Hope I have to eat my Gator hat. I'll be there. It'll taste great!
Jason and Joaq,
Sounds like frustrating times for Gator fans, one and all. The LSU game is an absolute must win for the Gators. A 2nd loss at this point in the season dooms you, which is unfortunate in that it is still early October.
Beware: LSU is ready for the challenge. With the extra week to prepare, they should be super-ready, although Nora says the extra week off is sure doom because the kids get sort of "out of whack", and play as if they are asleep (Please see SC at Oregon State to see what happens when you have the extra time off).
As for the Oregon-SC game, it was super fun to watch, as SC started slowly then came raging back, scoring 41 unanswered points! Fantastic action. Texting you during the game was fun, too. I may do a separate blog post on some subtleties from the game later.
Just a tid-bit: Not only were Nora and I there, my brother, Jose came down for the game with his son, Pablo; My son Jose was there; Elena Katnik and Juan Jose Cueto (Johnny's son) were there; Antonia Cueto (Jose and Anita's daughter) came down from Oregon (yes, she is a Duck) to see the action.
Had you guys shown up, you would have been related to half of the Coliseum!!
Great fun had by all.
Good luck next week.
Victor
Victor, I hope you guys took some pictures to post on the blog!! It sounds like a great time. Please send me pictures if you guys got them and I'll post them immediately.
Joaq,
Elena took some pictures of us on the campus tailgating (although we were seated on the ground; so, it was not a tailgater in the technical sense as no vehicle was involved). Nora may have to contact her to get the pictures in order to post them.
It was super fun. We scalped tickets right as we got on the campus for less than half face value. How do you like that?
What do you think of our performance on defense with our top defensive player (linebacker Rey Maualuga) missing the game? Oregon was in the top 5 in the Nation in rushing offense; and we held them to 60 yards rushing. Pretty impressive. No "Jim Trautt" effect for us.
Take care,
Victor
Note: Are your knees sore? (From the praying for Divine intervention for the LSU game). VMC
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