USF (1-1; 0-0 American) at Southern Miss (1-1; 0-0 Sun Belt)
Saturday, Sept. 14 • 7:00 P.M. • M.M. Roberts Stadium (36,000) • Hattiesburg, Miss.
SURFACE: Sports Turf
TV: ESPN+: Jason Baker (P-by-P), Austin Davis (analyst)
AUDIO: 102.5 FM, 102.5-HD2 The Strike; TuneIn (Bulls Unlimited);
SERIES: Southern Miss leads, 3-1
IN TAMPA: Tied, 1-1
IN HATTIESBURG: Southern Miss leads, 2-0
LAST TIME: Southern Miss won, 27-20, in '04 in Tampa
VS SUN BELT: 8-1
USF GAME NOTES
There are no celebrations for moral victories — only real victories — in the world of USF head coach Alex Golesh.
While ESPN viewers and the 100,077 fans at Alabama's Bryant-Denny Stadium know that the Bulls trailed by one point entering the fourth quarter last weekend and still had it as a one-score game with 6:45 remaining, Golesh will deal only in reality.
So as the Bulls (1-1) prepare for Saturday night's trip to Hattiesburg, Miss., and the program's first meeting in 20 years with the Southern Miss Golden Eagles (1-1), Golesh wants to clean up the messy finish that led to Alabama's deceptive-sounding 42-16 final score.
"The truth is we played 54 minutes really well, then there's six minutes of the worst stuff you could ever imagine, stuff that just wants to make you throw up,'' Golesh said Tuesday during his weekly news conference. "We work on fourth quarter every single day, end of practice. So today, we get everybody together. Everybody grab a knee.
"I was literally challenging the coaches, the trainers, the water people, myself, all of us … we've got to get laser focused right now. I mean, laser focused. That doesn't mean you can't play free and you can't make a mistake. But we need the entire program locked in. Maybe I didn't make a big enough emphasis on the fourth quarter. Maybe that's coaching. Maybe that's me. But we're going to work on the importance of it every day to make sure that it is important and it doesn't happen again.''
For three-and-a-half quarters, USF played toe-to-toe with the nation's No. 4-ranked team, an iconic SEC powerhouse, on the night that its home field was named for Nick Saban, its legendary former head coach.
But for those only seeing the final score — 42-16 — the flavor of what happened most of the night was somewhat lost.
"It irks me,'' Golesh said. "The whole thing irks me. I couldn't sleep. It literally breaks my soul … because we couldn't go finish that game. And the easy cop-out thing is to say, 'Man, we played really well. Did you see us? We were competitive.'
"No. That game is on the schedule. My job is to build a program where we're winning that game. At the end of the day, the sun came up Sunday and we went back to work. But even if it (finished) 21-16, I'd still be sick … because a loss is a loss.''
Golesh emphasized that the game's final six minutes were caused by a lack of execution — not a lack of effort.
"We played really, really, really hard — and that carried through the last six minutes,'' Golesh said. "That's why, at some point, I can go to sleep. Because we did play really, really, really hard. It was a complete lack of execution in the sense of dudes getting blown out because they were tired, they were out of a gap, they didn't do something they should have done, they didn't get the signal as fast as they needed to. That's execution. That's coaching.''
Golesh said he was very pleased overall with the defense's effort and execution through most of the game — Alabama had just 189 total yards entering the fourth quarter — and loved the depth displayed at most positions. He said cornerback De'Shawn Rucker, a Tennessee transfer who had a team-leading 10 tackles, was "legitimately the best player on the field.''
Offensively, there were some issues.
Quarterback Byrum Brown was his warrior-like self on the ground, running 23 times for 108 yards. Passing was another story. Brown was just 15-for-35 with 103 yards and he misfired on three long pass attempts — two consecutively — when receivers had broken free enroute to potential touchdowns.
Meanwhile, the Bulls were just 2-for-18 on third-down conversions and had three red-zone trips that resulted in field goals (of 34, 25 and 22 yards by John Cannon), not touchdowns. That frustrated Golesh, who made red-zone performance a major point of offseason emphasis.
On Brown, Golesh said the coaching staff needs to do a better job of putting their quarterback into advantageous positions.
"We never got Byrum into a good rhythm,'' Golesh said. "We weren't getting a ton going on with first down. You're trying to gage how many hits you want this kid to take (on designed running plays).
"We tried to get him in a rhythm by shooting the ball vertically a little bit. You get behind those guys (defensive backs), but you don't connect on those and you're talking through it like we're inches away, inches away. We didn't play-action pass like we wanted to, so he never had that rhythm. He didn't turn the ball over a single time and he was never careless with the ball. It's not impossible, but it's just tough to get into a rhythm when you're stuck in third-and-long.''
On the woes for third-down conversions and red-zone execution, Golesh said the Bulls would benefit from better first-down performances.
"We've got to be better on third down, but it seemed like we were in third-and-long most of the night because we put ourselves in bad situations with first down and second down,'' Golesh said. "When you get in the red zone, it all condenses down, so the execution and timing must be at an elite clip. Those dudes who are really good, long players … now you've condensed them into a box. So, it condenses your precision and execution.
"I would attribute a majority of it to us not being able to run the ball (on first down). You can't run it on first down. You can't run it on second down. So now you're in a tough third-down spot. We didn't do a good job of getting ourselves into third-and-3 at the 3-yard line or third-and-2 at the 2-yard line … where you could throw it or run it. And overall, we hardly ran any plays on third-and-medium or third-and-short. We never even got to those plays on our sheet.''
Golesh said it all makes for good teaching points and practice plans in the preparation for Southern Miss.
"We just go back to our process and worry about the process … not worry about, honestly, the fact that we lost that game,'' Golesh said. "Let's worry about what happened in the last six minutes and let's build on what happened in the first 54 minutes that made us successful. But it's always concentrating on the process more so than the end result.''
–#GoBulls–
