Gators maul the Commodores

I must confess, I had serious doubts about Florida's basketball team's ability to beat a good team. They certainly proved me wrong, and that in spades.

Florida obliterated Vanderbilt in a game that demonstrated how a good offensive team doesn't have to play defense at all to win. Florida took a page from Vanderbilt's book and ran the Commodores off the basketball court early in the first half. Vanderbilt missed at least ten layups in the game, and even though a couple of them were tough, there is just no excuse. Not only that, the Commodores played lousy defense that wouldn't have stopped a high school team.

But the Gators deserve credit for taking advantage of Vandy's early struggles and just completely burying them in a barrage of hot shooting. Florida cooled off considerably in the second half, but were still much the best team yesterday. Here's a look a the box:



Now, let's go to the blogs. Let's let Orange and Blue Hue start on the the Gator side:

It’s time to remove the qualifiers. This is a VERY good team which has the firepower to beat any team in the conference. Nick Calathes is the leading contender for SEC freshman of the year honors and should be first-team All-SEC. Marreese Speights has arrived. Three games in a row he’s shown us an aggressive, powerful presence in the low post. The switch has been flipped. Big Mo is now arguably the best big man in the SEC.

I think he is correct. The Gators are capable of beating anyone in the conference, and even though this wasn't Vandy's best, you have to admire the maturity and execution of their young basketball team. Their defense is highly suspect, in my opinion, but they run the offense beautifully, and many times wound up with layups by running the Commodores off screen after screen. Combine that with the savvy and outstanding court awareness of Nick Calathes, and you get a beat down of the 14th-ranked 'Dores.

Mlmintampa at Alligator Army doesn't seem to recognize his own team:

Who were those guys out there? I saw players wearing white jerseys, then I saw the team make a 23-0 run and I seriously doubted that Speights, Werner, Calathes, Lucas, and Hodge were on the floor. It was a run reminiscent of older teams who knew how to destroy people.

Heh. I was wondering the same thing. Very impressive.

For the Commodore side, we have Save the Shield first. Philipvu94 says that he didn't see the game, but now he sees the 'Dores and the SEC in a bit of a different light:

But man, it’s clear that our OOC record that made us look like the best team in the SEC, right up there with Tennessee, was really flattering us. In reality, here’s how I see the SEC:

Serious Final Four contender: Tennessee

Mediocre-to-good; might land a 5-to-8 seed with a strong February: Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, State, Vanderbilt*

Low-mediocre: Arkansas, Georgia

Flat-out terrible: Alabama, Auburn, Carolina, LSU

I'm reluctant to agree with the idea that the Gamecocks are terrible -- they certainly are more capable than I previously thought, but their record is poor. Then again, so is Kentucky's.

Bobby O'Shea at Vanderbilt Sports Line says it's not time to panic ... yet:

As Aaron wrote in the comments section for the Florida Preview, no one who watched today's game can be happy with the Commodores performance. It's not just that we lost the game, it's that we were never really in it. Let's give credit where credit is due: Florida is a very talented team that played one of, if not their best game of the season. The fact that Vanderbilt opened up the game 2-16 from the field and allowed Florida to go on a 23-0 run didn't help matters either. During the first 12 minutes, it honestly appeared as if there was a lid over the basket. We must have missed 6 or 7 shots around the basket early, and of AJ's 6 missed from the floor (he was 2-8), all of them were within 3 feet of the basket.

He's right. Vanderbilt played very badly, and did a lot of self-inflicted damage. I don't mean to belittle the Gators effort, though. I'm not at all convinced anything but the final score would have been different if this was the Vanderbilt of late December. With all that said, the Commodores definitely do need a win now. They have been hit hard lately, losing 3 out of the last 4 games, and things don't get any easier when they travel to Ole Miss on Wednesday.

For the Gates, they have almost a week off before they take on the Razorbacks in Fayetteville. Both those games are highly interesting to SEC basketball fans.

Around the SEC bloggers

We are in that time of year where the remnants of the college football season is, in the words of Montgomery Gentry:

Gone like a freight-train, gone like yesterday
Gone like a soldier in the civil war, bang bang

That's right. Gone. We are in that long, 7-month period where recruiting and the NFL draft will be the only things to talk about, and glory on the field is over half a year away.

Ethanator1088, The SEC Football Blogger, thinks that this is a good time to reminisce a little, like back to Auburn's 2004 undefeated season in which it was denied the Hajj to the BCS championship:

Let me get right to the point. Auburn was gypped. They were cheated. They were “ done wrong”. They should have won the national championship. This is the best reason for a college playoff. I do not care if you are an Auburn fan. If a team goes undefeated through the SEC, they deserve a shot at the National Championship. It is idiotic to think otherwise.

After castigating Booty and Cotu below for whining, I'll bet you think I am going to do the same thing here. But you would be wrong. I think Ethanator1088 is right. Auburn wasn't necessarily robbed because they were a better team than either of the eventual contestants, although I think I could make a sound argument they were. Rather, they were robbed by the system which forces a choice between two of three virtually equal teams in every respect without giving them a chance to settle the matter on the field.

Of course, I have agitated over this all year long, and since we are entering the interregnum between this season and next, I expect to agitate some more. But not today.

Moving to the sport that tends to occupy our attention during said interregnum, it seems that Ole Miss easily dispatched a tough Mississippi State [UPDATE: OOOps. Got that one backward. Thanks to Marcus for pointing out my egregious error, and apologies to MSU for my faux pas. Too much blogging lately.] Mississippi State dispatched an Ole Miss team that has been on a roll yesterday at the Hump. Strands of Crepe Paper has the word:

The score on this one says it all. State beat us tonight like a drum at a sold out Humphrey Coliseum. Charles Rhodes completely had his way inside, scoring 26 points on 12 of 14 shooting. Curtis, Kenny Williams and Malcolm White were continuously schooled inside and stayed in foul trouble.

Ole Miss has announced its arrival as an SEC force, for this year at least. I really expected MSU to do better, and as a Kentucky Wildcat fan, this isn't encouraging after MSU beat Kentucky in a tough game at the Hump. As a Kentucky fan, the MSU loss now doesn't seem so bad. Kudos to Ole Miss MSU, and Parrish Alford tells the tale from the Rebel side of things:

What’s next? State wasn’t a must-win game. The biggest loss in the last two games was at Auburn, because that’s a place the Rebels were favored and a road game they could have won. It was going to be far more difficult to win at State.

To my mind, the ultimate act of disrespect to a rival is to say something like the above. Just another game. Meant nothing. Ouch.

Turning back to football, Third Saturday in Blogtober has an update on Alabama's search for a new Offensive Coordinator, and the name ... Jim McElwain. Your reaction is probably the same as mine, and his: Jim Mc-who? The Tide Druid is also reporting on this.

Joel at Rocky Top Talk is reporting that Eric Ainge was named the offensive MVP for the South in the Senior Bowl. Kudos to Ainge and the Vols. In more Volunteer news, Georgia went up to Tennessee to challenge the knot-headed Volunteers in hoops, and got sent home bloodied and humbled. Lawvol at Gate 21 has the call:

In the process of laying it to the Dawgs, Tennessee secured its 27th consecutive victory in the Tommy Bowl. and improved to 17-2 on the season. Chris Lofton — apparently feeling the juice once more — scored 27 points, including 6 three-pointers. Lofton has been steadily improving over the last few games, which is good considering now is when the Vols will need his shooting ability most — in the heart of the SEC schedule.

Paul Westerdawg at The Georgia Sports Blog has the view from the other side:

Here's my issue with the game...no the program as a whole. My source of frustration if you will. I'm no hoops guru, but I know three things to pretty much be unshakable, unwavering hoops truths:

1. If you don't hustle defensively on the road, you don't win.

2. If you don't pass well or move without the ball effectively, you're easy to defend. I think it was Bobby Knight who said, "The easiest man to defend is the man standing still."

3. Moving and passing intelligently do NOT depend on talent.

Speaking as a person who is a hoops guru (well, I like to think so, anyway), I think he is dead right in all three areas.

Finally, the Bleacher Report gores one of my all-time favorite oxen -- Bobby Petrino. Seems the game of musical defensive coordinators has left Petrino the odd man out, and not Spurrier after all:

[Ellis] Johnson left his position at Mississippi State around a month ago to be the new defensive coordinator at Arkansas.

Then he moved on to join sleazeball extraordinaire, Bobby Petrino, to rebuild the Razorbacks. Well, that marriage also lasted just a month.

Now Arkansas is the odd man out: The only party without a defensive coordinator. I think it is great. Petrino deserves it.

See, it seems that Spurrier stole Johnson away from Petrino. Ah, [dis]loyalty -- it's not just for head coaches anymore.

Booty still arguing that USC should have been in BCS Champoinship

You know, hearing the USC players and some fans continually argue that "they wuz robbed" is getting old. Not that it will stop anyone, but at least I have a blog to vent about it on. Got some cheese? Ready for some whine? Take it away, John David Booty:

“After the Rose Bowl we knew, and I think a lot of people around the country knew, that we should have been in that game,” said Booty, the Trojans’ quarterback. “And we would have been if we hadn’t hit a little rough patch there during the middle of the season.”

So let me get this straight. It says here that you lost to Stanford at home. Standford was a team that won 4 whole games all year, and lost to *ahem* Notre Dame! The loss to Oregon was on the road and definitely against a worthy opponent, but losing at home to Stanford is as unforgivable, in the BCS championship game sense, as losing to Appalachian State (arguably a much better team). LSU, on the other hand, lost multiple overtime games to two teams that went to mid-level bowls.

So I really wish you would do us all a favor, JD, and be a man and a leader. Own up to the fact that your team's big bowl blowout was against a team that half the SEC could have beaten, and accept it. We are all very sorry you were hurt for the Stanford game, but if you were so important to the team that it can't even defeat an overwhelmingly inferior opponent at home without you, what chance had you against LSU -- or Ohio State, for that matter?

Not to be outdone, Georgia's kicker, Brandon Cotu, aught to close his pie hole as well. Cotu brings us a Southern vintage of Booty's whine:

“We definitely had an argument for being the two-loss team that should have had the opportunity to move forward and play for the national championship,” Coutu said. “If we had played any of the other teams, I think we definitely would have given them a game, if not won.”

WAAAAHHH. Good grief. You couldn't even hold serve at home against South Carolina, a team that also failed to make a bowl appearance, and Tennessee drubbed you in Knoxville. They didn't just beat you -- they beat the living daylights out of you, and LSU beat Tennessee. So by what twisted logic do you consider yourselves justified in making such a claim? Spare me, and yourself further embarrassment and just stuff a sock in it.

22 players from the SEC in the Senior Bowl

As an SEC blogger, I try not to trumpet the accomplishments of my home team, UK, very often. I promised when I started this blog that it would not be UK-centric, and I think I have lived up to that commitment.

However, Kentucky is well known not to have near the football tradition of most other SEC schools, and LSU is no exception. But this year, thanks to one of Kentucky's most outstanding senior classes in many decades, they turn out to have as many players in the Senior Bowl as the national champs, four for each.

On the South squad, the SEC dominates, having no less than 22 out of 52 players from SEC schools on its roster. The breakdown looks like this:

School	Players
Kentucky	4
LSU	4
Alabama	3
Auburn	2
South Carolina
Arkansas	3
Vanderbilt	1
MSU	1
Ole Miss
Georgia	1
Florida	1
Tennessee	2
Total	22

According to this article, the SEC is not only leading in number of players, but in smack talk. Well, I think they may have earned the right to talk a little smack, anyway.

Congratulations to all the SEC schools for their outstanding participation in the Senior Bowl this year, and good luck to all involved.

Sad news for the SEC

Sad news today for all SEC fans. Steve Spurrier's mother has apparently passed away. Marjorie Spurrier was 86 years young. Sometimes, tough years just get tougher.

I lost my mother only last year, and I know how it feels. Whether we are close to our mother or not, there is an emotion that is ... deep in the race, and hits very hard when we lose the face we first saw from our cradle. My sincerest sympathy and best wishes go out to Coach Spurrier and his family. There are no words that will soothe such a loss. The impact of losing a mother cannot be mitigated or softened by the fact of its inevitability.

God bless you and yours, Coach, and may He comfort you with His presence in this difficult time, and ease the burden of your sadness.

Friday is for fun

OK, it's Friday. Time to find the fun stuff to get us ready for the weekend.

Says here were gonna start with Ryan Ferguson of Fanhouse, who blogs about a little Hawai'i dissin' coming from the Aloha state:

Here's one for the "Oh no he DIH-UNT" file. Former Hawai'i Warrior Lene Amosa says Hawai'i just didn't bring it in their game against Georgia.

As a former player, I'm tired of hearing fans and the media say that we were overmatched by bigger, faster, stronger players.

Georgia players are no different than us; the problem was they came to play and we didn't.

Oh, I get it -- the game's over, so now you talk smack. I hate to beat on the Rainbows, but please, God, don't let them play in a BCS bowl ever again. I'm with Ryan on this one. Somebody could get hurt, and unless Hawai'i starts feeding their boys an awful lot of poi, it won't be the Georgia boys.

Jai Eugene at Loser with Socks hasn't held back ... well, ever, and today is no exception. Florida fans will want to check out the Herbanator:

Hell, if Herban Meyer was a tool, he would be a toilet brush. All good Gators know that he will clean up these recruiting violations and make them go away like a large shit that leaves a skidmark in a newer low eco-friendy toilets. He is like the best tool ever!

Heh. Toilet brush. Don't you know that those plastic handles with the disinfectant-impregnated single-use sponges has replaced those? And man, they are cool, and they make a really good plunger substitute when ... Ah, never mind, TMFI.

Moving right along, we find that The Bulldawg Blawg is having more fun with Brian VanGorder. And I'll bet he got a raise, too. Finally, Third Saturday in Blogtober brings us this gem. Here's a taste:

The SLA (Sign Language Associates), along with other sign language groups, have filed suit against the NCAA, Rivals.com, Scout.com, ESPN, and other companies dealing with college football recruiting for trademark infringement. It appears that National Signing Day is already a holiday that is observed by many deaf people and their families on September 29th. And they don’t want to share it.

I love it when a blogger throws political correctness to the winds and just says "Damn the torpedoes! Let's mock the hearing impaired!" No doubt, more suits will be forthcoming.

Happy Friday!

Say what?

Wow. Imagine that. I've been nominated for a College Football Blog award.

I don't know what to say about that. So I'll say, "Thanks, guys" to Alligator Army for the kindness. This whole blog-award thing is new to me. Now I really feel guilty for not being able to post much for the last month.

[UPDATE1]: I'm told Rocky Top Talk has also suggested our name. Thanks to them as well.

[UPDATE 2]: Just noticed that SECFootballBlogger.com had nominated this blog also. SECFootballBlogger is one I didn't know about for some reason, but that's changed now. Thanks.

[UPDATE 3]: Now, I find that we have been nominated also by one of my favorite SEC blogs, Get The Picture. Thanks to the good Senator.