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Wow, that's a horrible piece. Did they miss the part of the game where our offense was on the field scoring points? The article makes it seem that if they had only not made so many mistakes on defense, they would have won the game.

Last week was SMU's turn to play "Ifs and Buts" the same "Ifs and Buts" could be made by UAB fans last nite giving away possibly 10-14 points at the goaline. In both games the clearly superior team won. "Ifs and Buts" are for the loser.

Just to play Devil's advocate here a bit...

If not for 2 fumbles literally AT the goal line, the score is MUCH closer than it ended up being.

SMU won the game pretty convincingly. UAB possibly was just a few plays away from being tied.

Both are true.

Without the turnovers, we possibly beat Tech last week, too.

Every week, each football game comes down to 5-6 key plays. The team that makes those plays, wins.

Unless you are New Mexico or Florida State. Then it's way more than 5-6 plays

On numerous occasions last night I turned to Arkpony and said "that was us for a long time until last year.".

A quick side note, that kind of dovetails off the conversation here...

June has said a number of times that the 1-11 season, and then the turnaround last year were about getting buy in from the players. Having them believe in themselves, that they could win games. He finally convinced the players and as a result we beat several teams last year with better talent than us.

During the Colorado-Cal game, the announcers were quoting the Colorado coach saying he had no idea how difficult the turnaround would be at Colorado. They had talent, but that no one on the team really BELIEVED that they could win. And he was having no success convincing them that they COULD win.

Those 5-6 plays I mentioned above each game are as much about belief and desire as they are about size and speed. June's greatest contribution to this program so far has not been in recruiting, offensive scheme, or in preparedness.

It's in belief. That's what those poor kids at UAB didn't have, and we did. They are in for a VERY long season, I'm afraid.

I was just happy that UAB pulled that "snap it through the QBs legs" play from the Texas Tech playbook. You would think they would have tried something Tech had more success with.

This was a much closer game than the final score indicated, but the better team did win

they also wouldn't have had 7 had we not coughed up the football and given them the ball on our 10 yard line. there offense was terrible when isabel was contained

Uh.. UAB, good luck with Troy next week.

The article isn't that far off reality. Turnovers have a way of negating domination. We dominated UAB the first half except for the finally drive of the half (by the way, a recurring theme, TTU, WSU and others). But the turnover put UAB in a great position. And the UAB turnover (shades of Kincaid fumbling as he was going in for the winning TD against UTEP) saved us from a real dog fight. We need to eliminate turnovers. And we ned to create more turnovers.

Two plays with UAB scores instead of UAB turnovers and it is a very different game. Give JJ the credit he and his staff deserve. We survived a turnover turned into a TD and we made the plays we needed to make to produce a comfortable win. That is a vast difference from just last year at this time.

go ponies

mrydel wrote:I was just happy that UAB pulled that "snap it through the QBs legs" play from the Texas Tech playbook. You would think they would have tried something Tech had more success with.

chuckle...

I watched it today - went right through the QBs hands, awful snap

ponyte wrote:(shades of Kincaid fumbling as he was going in for the winning TD against UTEP)

Totally didn't need to be reminded of that game.

Mustangs35SMU wrote:

ponyte wrote:(shades of Kincaid fumbling as he was going in for the winning TD against UTEP)

Totally didn't need to be reminded of that game.

If memory serves, Kincaid fumbled all by his lonesome. The UAB guy at least had an excuse.

I think the Kincaid fumble sums up the post DP SMU (and pre-JJ). I permanently lost a little life force when that play happened.