Saturday, October 01, 2005




End of game. Miami 27, USF 7. Proof that USF still isn't quite yet a permanent presence on the national scene, or more than likely proof that Mike Adamle is out of his league: the last mention of the score, "Miami 27, UFS 7." What can you say - the Joust this is not.

The guys at the ESPNU studios didn't impress me much either (and downright scared me at times), but they were dead on after the game. While the offense was overwhelmed by a Miami defense that could be top-10 by the end of the year, the defense gave fans a lot of good. While the early turnovers were more USF mistakes than Miami plays, there is no doubt that the complexity of the entire game would have been different without those early turnovers. Whether you're an up-and-comer or an established powerhouse, nothing will dig you a bigger hole than early turnovers.

One look at the rest of the Big East will tell you that it is absolutely not out of the question for USF to win the conference. Not counting the two teams that have yet to play a conference game, there are only 3 teams without a Big East loss. One of them is Rutgers. No offense to the rest of the Big East, but we will not play another team this season as good as Miami. Arguably, we will not play another team as good as Louisville either.

It will be interesting to see how the team reacts to this loss. We are blessed with a bye this upcoming week, followed by a road game at Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is a team in some trouble, but road games are always tough. Hopefully the extra week will give the team some time to correct some things, particularly the palpable tension between the receivers and Julmiste that seemed to manifest itself greatly at the end of tonight's game.

October 22 is homecoming, against West Virginia. That might be the Big East right there. As long as both teams can avoid pulling a Louisville this year (my own pick for a possible trap game for USF is Syracuse - they're bad, but the Carrier Dome is never a fun place to play), the winner of that game should have the upper hand in the conference. USF playing in a BCS bowl could do for the program what even a win against Miami tonight could not have done.

Hey, look at it this way: we looked better than the Gators did today.


Posted by Joel at 10/01/2005 11:32:00 PM