Monday, November 14, 2011

Derek Dooley prepares for Vandy by feeding his team's spirit

James Franklin has his team focusing on doing the best job they can for six seconds at a time, and taking one opponent at a time. Week after week, he sounds like a broken record, but the Commodores are getting better every Saturday.

And Derek Dooley? What’s he telling the media?

Check out these quotes from Monday’s press conference:

• “We’re on the ropes — we’re not out yet.”

• “It’s so important that our team feeds their spirit with some positive thoughts.”

• He said his team needs to be “solution-oriented” not “results-focused.”

• On Vandy: “Nobody can never pull away from them.”

• On what he’ll tell his team if the Vols don’t make it to a bowl this year: “We need to stay on Vandy. We’ll get through the Vandy game and see how we perform there.”

• “This one game is not going to impact our entire program the next 3 years, I’m not approaching it that way. It’s a big game for this season. If we don’t win we don’t go to a bowl.”

Wow. Sounds like he’s preparing his fan base for a loss. He knows this is going to be a tough game against a well-prepared team that’s feeling confident.

Remember, it’s so important that his team feeds their spirit with some positive thoughts.

Still, Tennessee has the 4- and 5-star athletes and we don’t. Tennessee has the tradition and we don’t. Tennessee has 100,000 screaming fans and we don’t. I’m looking forward to Saturday and I hope we win, but I’ll have to see it to believe it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"100,000 screaming fans"? I think not. My brother-in-law has given me his tickets and said that no one that sits around him is coming. 50-75,000 if that on Saturday night.

Dimon K-H said...

OK, so when their fan base has given up on the team, they still have nearly twice as many fans as we do at Dudley Field when we're excited about our team. My point is, we can't take UT for granted. I think we either blow them out or lose in the final seconds.

Anonymous said...

Here's hoping that CJF puts an exclamation point on the season by getting bowl eligible with 1 game left ! Beating tenn would really put the program on another level in terms of confidence given what this staff walked into in December. Not even close that CJF is a National Coach of the year candidate already. If he wins the last 2 games, then he wins it hands down. Go Dores !

even more anonymous said...

UT fans would also outnumber ours if we were playing the game in Nashville. Still, I am hoping that some people in the Knoxville area (who don't usually go to games) will take advantage of the empty seats to go check out these new Commodores.

I agree that we should never take an SEC team for granted, especially Tennessee. But I think Coach Franklin and his team will take care of business this weekend.

Greg M said...

http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/vanderbilt-safety-involved-in-armed-robbery-of-student.php

Vandy football player charged with armed rabbery. what is this all about?

DKH said...

Before everybody starts talking about how Franklin has lowered standards, keep in mind that Bobby Johnson recruited this kid. And to focus purely on football for a moment, if one of our four sophomore safeties (Marshall, Ladler, Butler, Simmons) is gonna kicked off the team, we'd prefer it to be the guy who hasn't played this season.