The East Carolina football team has the luxury of already knowing it
will play in a bowl game at the end of the season, but the Pirates are also
still afloat in the chase for the Conference USA championship.
With two regular season games remaining — beginning with Saturday’s
C-USA clash at Tulane — ECU (6-4, 5-1 C-USA) not only needs to win each of its
final two contests but also needs some misfortune to befall East Division
front-runner UCF.
Still unbeaten at 6-0 in C-USA and having dealt the Pirates their only
league loss, the Knights are in control, but a late-season turnaround is still
possible.
“Becoming bowl eligible was a goal,” ECU head coach Ruffin McNeill said
at Monday’s weekly press conference. “Now what we want to do is make sure we
finish playing the best we can. We can’t control (the C-USA race) part of it,
but we can control our fate and how we play.”
The Pirates haven’t played in the C-USA title game since winning their
second straight league crown in 2010.
Although a return trip to the championship might be a long shot this
season, the Pirates are preparing for anything, and McNeill stressed that
beating the Green Wave is tops on his team’s to-do list.
Houston:
Houston Cougars defensive back D.J. Hayden is in stable, yet critical
condition after colliding with a teammate in practice last Tuesday and tearing
a vein.
Hayden, a senior, was rushed to the hospital after tearing his inferior
vena cava, the large vein that carries de-oxygenated blood from the lower half
of the body into the right atrium of the heart.
He immediately underwent surgery and is expected to make a full recovery.
Team physician Dr. Walter Lowe said this type of injury is typical of
high speed car accidents, but has never been related to football before.
An injury of this degree has a fatality rate 95 percent of the time,
for Hayden to recover will be nothing short of a miracle.
Marshall:
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- University of Alabama at Birmingham football Coach
Garrick McGee decided the best way to slow down Marshall's offense was to head
back to the drawing board.
The defensive design he came up with stymied the Thundering Herd in the
first half and provided the Blazers enough cushion to come away with a 38-31
win on Saturday at Legion Field.
McGee knew the Herd liked to pass. It's no secret at all, as Marshall
entered the game ranked second in the Football Bowl Subdivision averaging
374.33 passing yards per game. So the Blazers dropped eight defenders into
coverage and kept just three down linemen.
"We really wanted to make it hard on (Marshall quarterback Rakeem
Cato) mentally and make him have to figure out what coverages we were in and
get him to bounce around," McGee said. "If you give him time to
figure out what coverage you're in, he has shown he will tear you apart for
400-plus yards."
Memphis:
Coach Justin Fuente inherited one of the worst football programs in the
nation when he decided to become the head football coach at the University of
Memphis. He is now faced with the tall
task of building a winning program at a university that went 5-31 in the three
seasons prior to his arrival.
The season did not start as well as hoped when Memphis lost to
UT-Martin, but after an impressive win against Tulane on Saturday (to consider
a football victory against Tulane impressive shows you how far Tigers football
has fallen) fans are starting to believe that things are finally beginning to
change for the better. They have more
than one conference win for the first time since 2008, (the last time Memphis
was bowl eligible) and with UAB and winless Southern Mississippi left on the
schedule the Fuente era could end season one with a remarkable four wins.
Rice:
Two games under .500, with two games left; logic says both games are
must-wins for the Rice Owls, who have set their sights on bowl eligibility. For
the first time since 2008, there is a real possibility of Rice playing itself
into a December game.
Coming off a bye week, well-rested and ready to go, the Owls have had
one of their most difficult weeks of practice heading into this next game.
“We definitely needed the bye week,” Rice quarterback Taylor McHargue
said. “We understand that you’re never going to make it through a season
completely healthy, but it feels good, and we’re focused, knowing what these next
two games mean to us. I think we’re ready to get back to work.”
Tomorrow, the Owls take on Southern Methodist University at Rice
Stadium, with the latter also just on the outside of bowl eligibility. Led by
former University of Texas quarterback Garrett Gilbert, who is no stranger to
big stages, SMU had higher goals for this season than to be playing into a bowl
game this late.
“My first game here, in 2008, we opened with SMU, and it was a pretty
big win,” Rice defensive end Jared Williams said. “I think it’s pretty cool I
get to play my last [home] game against SMU.”
Southern Methodist:
SMU, all set to join the new Big East in 2013, is going to find a lot
of familiar faces in their new conference. As the old saying goes,
"everywhere you go, there you are".
The Mustangs will be playing in the Big East West, a name which
hopefully is still in beta-testing. Their division partners? Boise State,
Houston, Memphis, San Diego State and Temple.
Asides from the Broncos, who have become a national power in football,
that's pretty much the same slate of teams SMU could have expected to see if
there hadn't been any conference re-alignment at all.
Most of the familiar names that remain in the conference will be in the
Big East East -- Central Florida, South Florida, UConn, Cincinnati, Louisville
and Rutgers.
Southern Miss:
Southern Miss football coach Ellis Johnson said he will wait until the
end of the season before evaluating what – if any – changes will be made to try
and bring back a fallen program.
“There may be attrition by choice,” Johnson said Monday during his
weekly news conference. “There may be things we have to evaluate.”
USM fell to 0-10 for the first time in the program’s history after a
34-6 loss before an announced 16,343 at Gerald J. Ford Stadium in Dallas.
Johnson said making wholesale changes in the middle of the season,
coaching or otherwise, would be counterproductive.
Tulane:
The Pirates are headed to a bowl game and Tulane is stationary and
pondering its future under first-year coach Curtis Johnson.
East Carolina made itself bowl-eligible for the sixth time in the past
seven years by beating Houston two weeks ago. The Pirates sit behind only
Central Florida in the East Division standings with their 5-1 mark and own the
third-best league record in C-USA.
The Green Wave is tied with Rice for the second-worst mark in the West
Division. For as much progress as the offense has made in recent weeks, the
passing production tapered off in Nov. 10’s 37-23 loss at Memphis.
Fifth-year senior quarterback Ryan Griffin managed only 211 yards – far
off his 450-plus passing per game in the previous two outings.
“We need Griffin to get hot and we can continue to improve,” Johnson
said. “We ran the ball a little better. All of those guys ran for 30 yards and
we had over 100 yards rushing. We weren’t playing from behind the whole day.
That’s just a glimpse of where we’re going to be. If we can come in, start fast
and don’t turn the ball over, I think we’ll have an interesting football game.”
Tulsa:
Cory Dorris made an impact play in Tulsa’s victory against Houston
Saturday. The senior defensive end from Jenks returned an interception 22 yards
for a touchdown to make the score 41-0. TU would go on to win, 41-7.
The play made by Dorris (6-4, 260 pounds) shined in the minds of league
media voters, it got him Conference USA Defensive Player of the Week. He
finished the game with six tackles, including two quarterback sacks for losses
totaling 16 yards. He also recovered a fumble in addition to his interception.
Dorris was part of a Tulsa defense that shut down Houston’s offense,
ranked sixth in the nation in passing. TU limited the Cougars to a season-low
262 yards.
UAB:
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Darrin Reaves rushed for 184 yards and two
scores and Alabama-Birmingham withstood a late Marshall barrage to win 38-31
Saturday.
The Blazers (3-7, 2-4 Conference USA) led 31-7 with 5:23 left in the
third quarter.
Within 2 minutes, the Thundering Herd roared back with a 10-yard TD
pass from Rakeem Cato to Jazz King, followed by Kevin Grooms' 7-yard TD run and
Justin Haig's 38-yard field goal with 7:18 remaining.
Reaves answered with a 17-yard TD, capping an 11-play, 80-yard drive
with 2:50 left to set a single-season UAB touchdown record with 12.
Marshall (4-6, 1-5) then moved downfield quickly and efficiently, with
Cato connecting with Tommy Shuler on 30- and 19-yard plays before finding Gator
Hoskins for a 3-yard TD with 1:41 remaining.
http://www.newstimes.com/sports/article/Reaves-UAB-hold-off-Marshall-rally-for-38-31-win-4026733.php
UCF:
UCF's move to the Big East likely won't make its path to college
football's biggest bowl games any easier.
A BCS advisory panel announced a new postseason format, which will
consist of six rotating bowl games. The champions of the five major conferences
— ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC — will earn automatic spots in the bowls.
The other five conferences, including the Big East, Conference USA,
Mid-American Conference, Mountain West Conference and the Sun Belt Conference,
would automatically claim a sixth spot.
Notre Dame would be guaranteed a berth if it has a successful season,
which means seven of the 12 spots in the access bowls would be locked. The
other five slots would be selected based on rankings determined by a selection
committee.
The committee's rankings would also identify the top four teams
competing in a new playoff that would ultimately decide the national champion.
UTEP:
Sometimes the difference between a conference champion and a team
struggling through the end of a lost season is profound. UTEP has been on the
wrong end of plenty of November blowouts that attest to that.
Saturday's 31-24 loss to UCF, however, showed the other way that an 8-2
team can be better than a 2-8 one.
Simply, the soon-to-be Conference USA East Division champions know how
to win. UTEP doesn't.
That showed over and over throughout this night, but came into stark
clarity after a 69-yard Nathan
Jeffery touchdown run completed a UTEP rally from 14 points down and
tied the game 24-24 with 6:49 to play.
From there, UCF needed four plays and 84 seconds to retake the lead.
UTEP needed five plays to turn the ball over on downs and the offense never saw
the field again.
Football is really fun to watch. It reminds me of my college days. Would love to see games when played between colleges.
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