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Printers leads Horned Frogs to rout in SMU's season finale



Legendary SMU running back Eric Dickerson had his jersey No. 19 retired at halftime Friday night at Ford Stadium. The NFL Hall of Famer was honored for a college career in which he established SMU career records with 790 carries, 4,450 yards and 47 rushing touchdowns and tied Doak Walker's career scoring record with 288 career points.

If only the pride of Sealy, Texas, could have suited up just once more.

The Mustangs certainly could have used the most prolific rusher in school history -- not to mention their career leaders in every other statistical category -- in Friday's 62-7 whitewashing they suffered at the hands of the TCU Horned Frogs.

The Frogs entered the game singing the praises of senior tailback LaDanian Tomlinson the Western Athletic Conference's all-time rushing leader and a fringe candidate for the Heisman Trophy. As he had against every other team the Frogs have faced this year, Tomlinson piled up yardage, racing for relatively pedestrian 174 yards and a touchdown on 26 carries. He scored on a brilliant 74-yard run in the second quarter, a play on which he danced up the left sideline, cut back against the grain of the SMU defense and sprinted past the Mustang defenders to the end zone. But considering the Mustangs entered the game gearing their entire defensive scheme around the idea of stopping the odds-on favorite for the 2000 Doak Walker Award, they really didn't do to badly. He was bound to break a long carry or two, but with the excetion of his long touchdown, Tomlinson was held to 100 yards on 25 carries -- for a very mundane average of 4.0 yards per carry. Nevertheless, he did continue to pile up his accolades. He became just the eighth running back in history to rush for more than 2,000 yards in a season and leapfrogged former Heisman Trophy winners Archie Griffin and Herschel Walker on the all-time NCAA career rushing list.

Instead, it was TCU quarterback Casey Printers who did in the Mustangs. The sophomore from DeSoto passed for 251 yards and four touchdowns, and he rushed for 90 yards and another score.

Amazingly enough, the Mustangs only trailed, 3-0, at the end of the first quarter. They stymied the TCU offense with gang tackling on Tomlinson and forced three first-quarter punts. But the lack of production from the SMU offense meant the Mustang defenders spent a lot of time on the field, and they got fatigued before breaking down on Tomlinson's touchdown run.

"TCU is a good football team and we knew that going in," SMU head coach Mike Cavan said after the game. "We played pretty well for the first 20 minutes or so and then they got on a roll. They made a bunch of big plays and chewed us up. It started to snowball. We didn't do anything on offense and haven't for the past two years."

The SMU offense did little to help out the defense. Junior quarterback Josh McCown completed just 4-of-14 passes for 20 yards in the first half and was replaced after the intermission by David Page, who played the entire second half, completing 7-of-17 passes for 99 yards and the Mustangs' only touchdown, a 7-yard toss to tight end John Hampton at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

The SMU running game was even more inept; tailback Kris Briggs led the Mustangs with a paltry 24 yards on 16 carries against the dominant TCU defense.

The lowlight of the game came in the form of choices made by TCU head coach Dennis Franchione. With TCU leading, 48-0, the Frogs rushed SMU punter Colin Vadheim in an effort to block the kick. Then, with the same score and the Frogs facing fourth-and-5, Franchione chose not to punt or run the ball into the line of scrimmage, choosing instead to have Printers deep to wide receiver Tim Maiden, who ran a deep post pattern and caught the pass for another score.

"This is the most embarrassing thing in my life," Briggs said. "I am crushed. My mindset coming in was to play them tough and show them what kind of football team we can be. I will keep this in my mind until the next time we see them. This will stick with me during offseason workouts, spring practice and fall drills.I will use this as motivation to work even harder."

The Mustangs for whom the rout was the toughest were the seven seniors who were playing their final college games.

"I'm embarrassed," senior defensive end Chase Schavrda said. "This isn't the way we wanted to end the season. I hope this sticks with the younger guys so they won't let it happen again."

<small>[ 10-06-2003, 12:50 PM: Message edited by: PonyPride ]</small>

TO all those who think we would be better off with Cavin still around....just remember this loss the year we opened the new stadium, and in my opinion, that TCU team wasn't any better than the Tech and OSU teams we faced this year.

Yeah, those were some bad time when Cavan was here....Let's see

Beating Kansas, a big 12 team
Almost beating Ole' Miss (a blown game)
6-5 season
Beating TCU in 98 (who went to, and won)
Bearly losing to a very good UNC team in his last game.

We were much more competitive in Cavan's stretch than we are thus far in Bennett's.

Bennett has not even come close to those accomplishments. These last two teams are the worst 1 and 2 teams I have seen thus far.

And btw, it is Cavan not Cavin.

Beating Kansas who was worse than Baylor at the time and we played them at home in a brand new stadium, let's bring Baylor in under the same circumstances and see what happens

Losing to TCU 4 of the 5 years he was here, one of those and 0-10 team that cost us a shot at a possible bowl game (that would be your 6-5 season when he had another coach's team)

Playing Ole Miss close.....weren't we ahead by 20 something and then lost in overtime...great game

Playing hard at UNC in Cavan's final game...so it takes Cavan getting fired to get his guys to play....your right those were some great years

Point being, take ANYONE of Cavan's years and they are all better than one of Bennetts.

Yes, we were ahead by 20 with Ole Miss and lost in OT. At least we were competitive. That season 1998 I think SMU played 5 top 25 teams, and with the exception of BYU we played them all close.

If bennett was coaching that team it would have been worse than the 92-16 Houston score.good try pride but you will not get alot of support.

Originally posted by sam:
If bennett was coaching that team it would have been worse than the 92-16 Houston score.good try pride but you will not get alot of support.

Sam, you are confusing the poor CPC. When did Houston enter this conversation?

You may want to check the date on the first post, Pony Pride wrote that almost 3 years ago. Dont think he was looking for your support on anything at that point.

BTW that post is interesting because it dates Dickerson's last trip to SMU I believe or did he show for a reunion the next year? Anyway as I posted the other day that SMU team only had about 25 scholarship African Americans according to the 2000 press guide. Today we have about 44, TCU about 54 and Baylor about 60. If indeed that was his last visit then one can see exactly what he was talking about in that interview with The Ticket.

Any one season was better than Bennett's? Well how about the 2000 season where Cavan went 3-9? His three worst losses were to NC State 41-0, Rice 43-14, and TCU 62-7. Bennett's three worst losses last year were to OSU 52-16, Hawaii 42-10 and Navy 38-7, I don't see how Cavan did any better than Bennett did. If you look at who they beat that year it is also pretty similar, Neveda, Tulsa and Kansas, compared with Bennett's La. Tech, Tulsa and UTEP, (keep in mind that Neveda didn't win very many games that year) and you will see that they are pretty similar. The team that year was made up of guys he had recruited (it was his 4th year), and Bennett's first year was made up entirely of Cavan's recruits. Cavan had Luker, Page and McCown that year he definitely had some experience at the QB position, Bennett last year did not. So I ask you, how was 2000 better than 2002, at least in 2000 Cavan had the advantage of getting the guys pumped up to open the stadium and beat Kansas, and then reeled off 6 straight losses one to UTEP, one to Houston, and one to San Jose, so I really don't think he was any better than Bennett.

well Bennett does have as many 30 point losses in his first 15 games as Cavan had in 5 years-that ain't great.

True, but you could say it is against tougher competetion, my point is that I don't see how we have gotten worse, I don't think we have made improvement, but like I said in a post a long time ago, everytime we hire a new coach it seems like they take away some of the restrictions on the program, making it a little bit easier for the next guy. They weren't going to do anything else to help Cavan, but in order to entice Bennett (according to the story I heard) they had to agree to change some of the recruiting restrictions we place on our program. In other words we had to get rid of Cavan in order to take another step to having our program on a level playing field. Now admittedly I like Bennett, and I do want him to succeed, everytime I have heard him talk he gets me fired up, but if he has to fail in order to get the administration to get rid of more restrictions than that's fine as long as we are getting closer to the point that we can equally compete with the rest of the NCAA for recruits be the HS or JC. In other words, we are better off with Bennett because the administration saw that the way the were working under Cavan wasn't working, so they fired him eased restrictions and got somebody new. IF it takes a few more cycles fine, I'll still be here. Hopefully the rest of you will be too.