Trying to think of something witty involving the words "fried" or "fluffy" or "a-roni." But it's a Monday.
And hey, we don't play until Saturday. We've done pretty well on Thursdays, huh?
Anyway, Rice is a scary team. No, they're not playing at home and they've never played in a conference championship game, like Miami-Ohio did. And no, they don't feature a national championship coach and a freakishly fast and powerful defense, like South Carolina did.
But they have a good quarterback. Did you see Chase Clement pick (above) apart SMU a couple of weeks ago, or bring the Owls — the Owls! — back to beat Memphis? At this point, he's a better quarterback than either the Redhawks' Raudabach or the Gamecocks' Smelley. He's got a great target. He looks pretty mobile, too. Don't know much about his line, though Miami and South Carolina's lines were nothing to write home about.
Smelley had a stable of great targets who'd be stars at Rice, too, and he was fairly mobile. I think we're going to put pressure on him like we've done the quarterback in our first two games, and our secondary is still the strength of our team. Lou Holtz basically downgraded the Gamecocks defense this weekend from the best in the conference to an also-ran, but that was just a knee-jerk reaction after we dealt SC a death blow on Thursday night. Believe me, it'll be a relief to our guys to face Rice's defense. We were a couple of inches away from a punt missing a Gamecock blocker's leg and us not recovering the fumble that led to Nickson's quick-strike pass that led to the blocked field goal that led to Walker's reverse that led to... you get the idea.
I think Nickson's gonna be off to the races again, and I think you're gonna see some new targets emerge, like Jamie Graham and especially Brandon Barden did last Thursday.
But it's still a scary game. Don't forget our home game with MTSU in 2005 after we'd beaten Wake Forest, Arkansas and Ole Miss.
We probably won't be underdogs, but we need to act like we are. Being underdogs has worked for us so far.
1 comment:
I think Smelley is an unfortunate name.
Post a Comment