you guys can win the East. I would be concerned about how conservative Stoops got in the second half on offense , but hey, it worked and I have no doubt if needed you guys could have turned it back on. Good luck with Georgia. I love Snell and Allen , both are big time , we have no one on their level in our program. Both should be 1st round , but with Snell being a RB and the way NFL views that position he maybe a victim of the current mindset and drop to the 2nd. Hope not. Again , great game , and awesome atmosphere
Congrats from a Gamecock, very impressive and this was no fluke.....
- Thread starter VirgilCaine
- Start date
Thanks Cock. Good luck the rest of the way. Beat the Gators and Viles.
Oh yeah, I am sorry Kash Daniels is out for the first half next week. I think that’s a little extreme , to call targeting there. I think maybe unnecessary roughness, but this is what the game has gone to.
Honest question, did you guys get conservative on offense in the second have or did we settle down and play better? My guess is a little of both, I remember Lou Holtz use to love to nurse a lead. I hated it. When you guys face bettter competition, please stay aggressive. You have to talent to push the issue, you are similar to how we use to be, we never developed that killer instinct, I sincerely hope you do. You guys can go as far as you want, you have to believe.....shit you may be there. Hope so.
Thanks for the nice posts, much appreciated. I would say that for the second half it was a little bit of both. You guys played better D in the second half, although we helped by shooting ourselves in the foot a few times.
I'm sorry to say this but I'm not sold on Jake Bently. He's an average SEC QB at best. Except for the one fluke play that resulted in your only TD, I thought UK's D played pretty well for the most part.
Both, and penalties killed UK’s offense....that said you all definitely played much better on D in the second half. Completely stifled our offense. Good sign for USC that you all didn’t fold after that first half.
Stoops is always content to go conservative and milk the clock when up by 3 scores - especially so this year b/c for the first time in my adult life we can actually trust our D to stop the other team from scoring.
I think it was a combination of being conservative, and penalties killing our drives. We went into USC territory 3 times in the second half, but then penalties pushed us back.
You look at the overall drives in the second half we had drives of 2 yds, -1yds, -13yds, 3yds, and 1yd.... but we ate up 10:00 minutes in those 5 drives combined, which is fantastic for killing clock. Frankly, USC killed itself on its 20-play 7:40 drive that delivered 0 points.
Classy post, thanks for the kind words. To answer your question later in the thread I really think its a bit of both. Your defense did play a lot better in the second half, you were keeping 8 in the box most of the second half and our coaches didn't want to chance it too much with Wilson going pass have and give you guys a pick 6 or something like that. Best of luck the rest of the season, I hope Bentley's knee is good to go for you guys playing Mizzou this week. Oh and do us a favor and beat Mizzou.
Thanks Virgil.
Did you by any chance serve on the Danville train? ( Great song-great band!)
A little of both. We didn't try anything innovative. 3rd and 40...Really?
The Band version, not the Joan Baez version, she didn't even get the lyrics right.
Yep, until Stoman’s Calvary tore up the tracks again.
I think being conservative was less of an issue than the fact that we took some bad penalties and your defense seemed to play more discliplined in the second half.
On our first drive of 3rd quarter (one where we missed the FG), we came out throwing on second and third down before kicking on fourth down. Not exactly what I’d call conservative and seemed to me like SC simply defended it well.
The second and fourth drives were both derailed by penalties. Second drive we ended with I think a 2nd and 21 before punting, and the fourth drive ended with a pick after getting into a 3rd and 40 situation. You don’t leave your playcalling much options when shooting yourself in the foot like that.
It was really only the third and fifth drives where you could maybe say we got conservative. However, I want them giving Benny the ball in that situation and trying run it down your throats. Your defense simply stopped us.
I think SC deserves some serious credit for the type of effort they maintained in the second half. With how the first half went, they could’ve easily packed it in and they didn’t. Beating you guys was a really good win.
Appreciate you stopping by with kind words and no trash talk. Now that we’re done playing you for the year, good luck with the rest of your season.
Thanks, I’m glad we didn’t quit. Yep, I’m searching for a bright spot. The thing that would help the most is for UK to build on this victory and continue to play like we know they can. I really would like to see you guys win the east and shake things up nationally. I’m going stop know before I put the jinx on your program.
THIS ^^ - I always say the same thing about teams that beat UK in basketball. "If they would just play that way against everyone, they'd have a great year". But, it's hard to do. However, Frank Martin and your bball team did it a couple of years ago, so it's possible. Time will tell if UK will play this way night in and night out. But, things are looking good so far. Good luck to your guys the rest of the way!
As a third party observer and going solely based on what I saw during the game (only time I’ve seen SC play this year), then the potential bright spots I see for your team are:
- You’ve demonstrated the ability to sustain effort and it was consistent discipline that was the bigger issue. From my experience playing and watching sports, getting players to always give effort is the harder of the two to fix. So of the problems to have, at least you have the one that’s potentially easier to fix and fix within this season.
- Similar to point #1, SC really hurt themselves with a couple of self-inflicted wounds. There was one dropped pass and a run where the RB tripped on what was likely a TD that were particularly back breaking. Again though, if the team can keep their heads, those are things you can potentially clean up quickly. Whether they can remains to be seen, but it’s not like it’s a situation where you’re outclassed athletically and need an offseason of training and recruiting to fix it.
- The gimmicky offense you ran on the second or third drive shows an ability of your coaching staff to scheme around opponents strangths. While we could’ve executed against that a little better, it didn’t change the fact that you were able to force Allen to line up away from the line and neutralize the area where he can have the most impact. He’s very good in coverage, but it’s getting after the quarterback where he does the most damage.
EDIT: just to be clear, I referred to that offense as gimmicky simply because it’s not something you typically see. Don’t want that to come across as a backhanded compliment.
Broader point is that my family has had football season tickets for over 30 years, so unfortunately, I have a lot of experience watching teams with serious flaws and I didn’t see too many glaring flaws for SC. The only down side to that is that it can make watching a team like SC much more frustrating because you know they’re capable of doing better.
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Actually, that's Stoneman, as in George Stoneman, a US Army cavalry officer who was conducting raids in SW Virginia late in the war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stoneman
A little of both. SC new they where in desperation mode and had to stop the bleeding. On UK side, they got up, lost their edge, and then made some dumb penalties. When they got up big, they lost focus and committed unforced penalties. It is not like we did not have chances to score, we missed a FG, shot our self in the foot in the red zone with penalties a couple of times. another time went for it on 4th and short at the 29 because we did not have faith in our kicker. Could have easily scored 13-17 points in the second half.
I would agree with what others have said about this, it has been a source of frustration with us about how Stoops sometimes gets too conservative and tries not to lose games, and like in last year's Florida game, we lost anyways to McElwain. I think our defense this year is probably more capable of holding a lead than in previous years, though.
Pure class on your part.
I can tell by your post you know football. You’re right about getting too conservative. You’re also right about running backs not being coveted much in the NFL.
Benny will be a 2nd round pick, but he’ll do fine at the next level.
Good luck the rest of the season.
Right again. It was definitely unnecessary roughness. It was also definitely NOT targeting.
Real classy post.
Cats got conservative, but the Gamecocks brought the house in the 2nd half and played some mighty good D.
Throw in that D with Kentucky forgetting how to play clean (some of that was because of that SC defense) and it turned into a war. Which we knew it would be.
Good luck rest of the way, man. Hope you guys show the football analysts Missouri is STILL all offense and no defense.
Cats got conservative, but the Gamecocks brought the house in the 2nd half and played some mighty good D.
Throw in that D with Kentucky forgetting how to play clean (some of that was because of that SC defense) and it turned into a war. Which we knew it would be.
Good luck rest of the way, man. Hope you guys show the football analysts Missouri is STILL all offense and no defense.
