1. DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH: SOUTH FLORIDA 31, UCF 24 (OT)
Every week, I select (with your help) a game outside the national spotlight to watch, analyze, and report on. This week’s Diamond in the Rough was the intrastate rivalry matchup between the South Florida Bulls and the Central Florida Knights in Orlando.
Eleven months ago, South Florida and UCF met in Tampa...and the result wasn’t pretty. The Bulls posted a 64-12 win that helped vault them to No. 2 in the BCS standings.
Even less pretty, at least in the minds of Knight fans, USF quarterback Matt Grothe was quoted as saying: “I hope they like what happened because we weren’t trying to run the score up on them. We’re that much better than them.”
The funny part about that game is it served as a turning point in the Knights’ season. Under Coach George O’Leary, UCF won seven games in a row to capture the Conference USA crown and earn a trip to the Liberty Bowl. That'll look good on anybody's resume. (Sorry, I couldn't resist the resume reference.)
After finishing 2007 with a 10-4 record, the Knights were looking for revenge against South Florida this weekend. Safe to say, this wasn’t going to be a 52-point game again.
It was obvious watching the ESPN2 telecast that these teams don’t like each other all that much. Maybe it was Grothe’s inflammatory bulletin-board comments...maybe it’s the fact that USF decided they didn’t want to play the Knights again after this year...who knows? Whatever the reason, we saw players jawing and skirmishing from the opening kick, and it went downhill from there.
One of the biggest reasons that the Knights competed so hard last night (in my opinion) was the amazing crowd. Bright House Networks Stadium was packed and the fans were loud...I’ve heard stadiums of 90,000 that don’t make as much noise as half that many did last night.
After a penalty-filled back-and-forth struggle (there was more laundry on the field than my college dorm-room floor), the Bulls seemed to have finally put things out of reach. Behind the play of star quarterback Grothe (think a poor man’s Tim Tebow), South Florida led 24-10 with three and a half minutes to play.
(I have to say, I was relatively impressed with Grothe’s arm and very impressed with his scrambling ability...he managed to turn sacks into gains consistently as the night went on).
However, UCF rallied late behind two touchdown passes from struggling quarterback Michael Greco; his metamorphosis and improvement in the final quarter reminded me of UCLA’s Kevin Craft on Monday against Tennessee. Greco’s only two touchdowns of the game came 66 seconds apart and raised the Orlando decibel level by a couple dozen.
I thought South Florida had a chance to win the game in regulation, but, due to some questionable time management (see “Maybe Coaching is Easier Than I Thought” later in the column), they settled for a 42-yard kick that missed. A game this competitive (you could hear the hits from miles away) was destined to end in overtime, and so it did.
Much to the delight of the home crowd, the Knights won the toss and elected to go on defense first, but they ended up on the wrong end of a 31-24 final score.
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2 months ago
Nice column!
The great thing about the BJ Cunningham one-handed grab was he did it despite some blatant pass interference (that did get called, but didn't matter.) Catch of the year so far.
2 months ago
Thanks Joe! I'm looking forward to more and more reader submissions like the Cunningham catch -- with all the games that happen on the same day, I don't want to overlook anything.
from 2 months ago
It may be hard to find right after the weekend, but it'd be great to find YouTube videos of some of the highlights....I'll keep looking for the cunningham catch
2 months ago
Very good. One of the most comprehensive weekend recaps.
from 2 months ago
Thanks for reading Nick!
2 months ago
Nice column.
The USF-UCF was the second best college football game I watched all day; BYU-Washington was #1.
from 2 months ago
Thanks! I knew going in that USF/UCF was going to be a pretty good game; it's always fun to try and come up with an interesting battle that isn't hyped to death by the media. I think Purdue/Oregon will be one this week, and hopefully readers will send in ideas for which games to cover from then on!
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