outoftown

To the topic of th thread: this is really bad, as bad as bad losses go and I will go on record and say that I am for firing the coach during the season if this becomes a lasting trend, cause he is not gonna get higher rated recruits than this unless there is a turnaround first.... but I do have to say this is unfair to Coach Stephens: Coach Benford only has 1 really bad loss and an understandable (though badly played) one, this can cannot be compared to the levels of prolonged futility that coach S. has accomplished at NT, a level which is truely HOF (Hall of futility) worthy. It was not just the tactical ineptitude but really also the impecable capacity to run off, both her staff and her players. I believe a coach has to have at least a season and a half time to deserevedly be named in the same breath as Coach S. ... I thus hope that if someone is this bad, we will not afford them the time to achieve this status

I was quite confused there for a second. I would not have been surprised to see the FB player transfer out, because with Bball and all it has been that kind of a week

ok, just realized that the second best thing about yesterdays gme is, that they get a chance to (slightly) redeem themselves today. the best thing remains that yesterdays game will not show up on the RPI

The best thing about this game is, that it does not show up in the RPI....other than that....

...but...but... this way the program grows....but...but... what is going to happen to all the naysayers now? Are you gonna leave those poor souls without a home?

And now for the positives: this is the first season in like forever, where this team kept the QB healthy through 10 games... although I am not sure some here would not be willing to trade a healthy DT for a healthy JimJim.

Also, he is mentioned on the Wooden list

I guess it was bound to happen, still nice it did: TM mentioned on the front page video of ESPN.com right now. discussing the Player of the year watch... nice The site that goes with it, he is second team all american for them. of their 17 analyists one has him first team (Miles Simon) and seven have him second team (Bardo, Brennan, Chad Ford, Fraschilla, Greenberg, Andy Katz and Jason King) the 9 that don't have him on there: Bilas, Gasaway, Lunardi, Medcalf, O'Neil, Pickeral, Bruce Pearl, Jay Williams, Dick Vitale

Ok, it is texas Tech... happy Matt?

It is not Baylor, they even have an away game (weird)

Well I do wonder why, if we have 2 or 3 more guys that actually make quite decent D1 receivers, we saw so little of them before Brelan went out. I think spreading the ball around a bit more would have helped us a lot

congrats to the ladies from me too, was enjoyable to watch, even thought the stream was rather poor

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/luke_winn/11/02/Naismith-watch-list/index.html?sct=cb_t11_a0

Is this a bit?

Now if this kind of thing is not great publicity for NT, then I don't know what is

Are you saying that he was not going on his free will, but rather thrown out?

I guess that would make sense, particularly if Delgado still is not ready to go , because he possibly has more practice reps than DT with the "second string" WRs

Still if I look at this, this schedule will not be much more difficult than this years. If we go lucky it could actually be pretty makable with UTSA plus 5-6 teams that finish with 4 or less wins this season and 1-2 more games that will see us slightly as dogs. I am optimistic that the coaching staff will make a bowl out of this opportunity. If they do not, I might want to look in another direction though.

So it looks like we are decided on who will take atterburys role next year. Good to see we seem to have an idea already and don't have to scramble last minute

Well this trend is gonna stop.... and if it is not this year it sure as heck is next year

59 players... ouff that really is lower than I thought. Thanks for all the research... it is nice to have people looking and giving facts instead of only giving an opinion.

I cannot be sure, but I do hope that last year is an indication, which would bode well for not breaking down. Clearly our team did not take well to the extended break No, we don't have loads of 4 to 5 stars starters, but at least it should be tough to know what we are gonna do passwise for AkState, cause the personell on some of the looks is hard to predict from what they got on film. Well yes, those are facts but it is also clear that this team is better than 2010, while Rice and UTEP are at best equally good than in 2010., even though the record only shows it partially, a lot has changed at NT since 2010. And from what I have seen the Rice and UTEP teams are less far along their development than ours, and I do think we are gonna profit more than average from the offseason due to what we will win as compared to who we loose.

First of, forgive me if this is a lengthy post. So 10 days after a great second half that brought us the coolest win since the dickey era, we loose a game at MUTS, clearly our worst effort on the season, we loose chancellor for the season and are down 31-0 shortly after the beginning of the second half. It goes without saying... I am extremely frustrated. The role of the players: It was sure really bad that Delgado was suspended (i sure would like to know what for), and it is absolutely devastating to see chancellor injured. That said, It took the players some time to create a reaction. Harris dropped his first 2 passes before he started catching some. I was pleasantly surprised by darnell smith, and bynes also stepped up. The O-line played way below it's usual standards of the season though. I do not undersstand why MUTS gets 3 more sacks than LSU, Houston, Troy and ULL combined. The D-Line could not get going the hole day, their QB rarely felt any heat, and this left a young and vulnerable secondary out covering receivers too long. We totally missed the first half of a game for the second time in a row. This game as a whole was particularly frustrating because both offense and defense had a terrible day (or at least first half) and there were really very few bright spots (the ones I remember I already named) Coaching: I would like to separate this into 2 parts: in game coaching and practice and game plan coaching. Let me start with the latter: Looking at the individual skills of players it seems clear to me that on an individual basis the players are improving fast. We are takling how we are supposed to, we are bigger and stronger, than since I watch this program, fundamentals on both lines seem to get better. Even special teams has made some advancements from a bad start. So while I can not see the practices, I do trust the staff in that part with maybe the excption of... quarterback play. I honestly don't know if we have a coach that is really effective at helping the development of our QBs along. If we do, the staff sure has hidden it this year, seeing as DT is the only QB they put out there and he just does not seem to be improving the fundamentals. Sadly enough this is an important excepetion seing that QB is kind of the most important position in Football and whatnot. The second part is in-game managment, and I am way less impressed there. Some have called last weeks game calling genious, but I don't share that assessment. The defensive play calling in the second half was great, props to skladany. But on offense there were only about 2 strokes of genious (one the screen pass Jimmerson makes a TD out of), the rest was very Vanilla and we got back into the game against ULL because the team outhustled and outplayed them at every turn. If your team plays well play calling is easy. We are not good at in game play calling on the offensive side. Some people say that McCarney is stubborn and this is the good kind of stubborn. I got trouble agreeing to this with respect to game calling. When I think of how ULM beat arkansas, I don't think they had managed that had he coached Berrys team. I don't need to see loads of passes, but I would like to see some guts not only from the players but also frome the coaches. The fact that we found out that Smith can catch, and that Bynes also does a decent job of it when you throw him the rock more than one time a game makes me wonder why it took a suspension and an injury for us to find this out. Might we not have benefitted from trying different options to see who is a 'gamer' among our WRs earlier in the season, and spreading the wealth a bit more so our game breakers get more space? And also so we have a plan b when one of them goes down? This makes me ask the question whether the decision to not give Osborn a chance is justified by his practice performance. The season so far: We have been a just below average team, pretty much middle of the road. That is an improvement over where we were 2 yearsago, but stagnation compared to last year. Both Defense and offense have played good at times, but there has only been 1 half when both sides really hit their stride at the same time. Both (offense more than defense) are prone to light and shadow performances. Thus both sides clearly have potential, but are often not capable of performing at their level. It makes me wonder what our team does for mental training. Maybe Football could take a page out of coach Benfords book? I think this needs to be adressed like every other aspect of the game. Some people tell me this is the normal thing and to be expected by a young team, and will get better with time. This youth thing does sound like a somewhat lame excuse to me. It is not like the teams we play against are full of 30 year olds. Aso: some of our most inconsitent players are not underclassmen. The remainder of this season: Some people have acted as if the season is over after this game. I tend to disagree. It is one game early for that assessment. A win over AkState and people will hurry back to say that at 4 and 5 a win over USA is proabable and then we got 2 cahnces to go bowling. I guess the coaching staff did not really have a plan for what to do without chancellor. The week now should give them the chance to regroup and plan for that, and there is a decent probability that they are gonne find a few packages they had not thought of, when having chancellor at their disposition, and those will be hard for AkState to game plan for. next season: My outlook for next season is actually quite positive: we are gonna get a lot of players onto the roster that are not yet for different reasons, and that will probably be good contirbutors: Stojkovic Chancellor and Teegarden should be back, several highly touted transfers including possibly a QB that will really help us, and we loose relatively few key players. Even if not all of those pan out, this should still accumulate to a really good help. Also as i said I do see improvment in our physical abilities and players fundamentals, and I trust this will keep up and put many a team in a position where they will have a hard time beating us, even if they have superior game managment. Also for us to go into CUAS is great for financial, geographical and rivalry reasons, but competition wise this is not gonna be a big step upwards: there are gonna be a lot of very winnable games. we are in adivision with UTEP, Tulane, Rice and UTSA after all. As the status is now, we should really win all 4 of those and then build on the rest. The OOC schedule is one of the best in terms of opportunities (real ones) we had in a long time. So I believe that our team will be better and have a schedule that sets it up for success as it has never had since coming to D1. This leaves me rather optimisitic for 2013. If we should fail with that though, then the coaching team will have to be held accountable. Please feel free to agree or disagree.

always like your podcasts, and saw things in this game similar to you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3t7MAwaaM But seriously I would also like to hear some rumors about how this goes... and did I understand that correctly: that is the friday after the exibition