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Good: Shane Buechele is a warrior. He had 356 yds passing, 3tds and zero picks, while under constant pressure. He is the epitome of a leader, calm, cool and fiercely competitive. It's hard to imagine, where we would be without him. Same for James Proche, who will go down as one of my all time favorites. He got hurt in the Houston game, re-aggravated it against Memphis. He refused to come out and still excelled for his team. D-line did a pretty decent job against Gainwell. Cobe Bryant started ahead of Nick Dennis, then pretty much rotated, usually the opposite. Rachee Rice was excellent in his first start, replacing injured Reggie Roberson. TE Kylen Granson stepped up and showed his versatility. Grit....team showed tons of it. Down 22, in an hostile environment, they refused to spit the bit.

Bad: The offensive line. It's true that they are better than last year, but, still have a looooong way to go. Xavier Jones had 22 yards on 11 carries, also fumbled the handoff for no apparent reason on our 1st play. Take out Freemans long run, he had 8 yards on 5 carries. Speaking of Freeman, how does he run out of gas at the 25 yard line? O-line should write Shane apology letters, he was constantly under duress, running for his life and getting the hell knocked out of him, even in max protection. Alan Ali continues to have problems with bad and errant snaps. 3rd and 6 near the Memphis goal line, he puts another one at Shanes feet, that ruined the timing pass to a open James Proche…..this was game 9, either Ali can do the job or he can't.
Club Takeaway, was closed until further notice. Defense gave up too many big plays and 3rd and long plays. Too many missed tackles. Memphis didn't punt until the 4th quarter. Memphis had 136 in penalties and still won.

The Ugly: Special Teams... Sonny said last year, that we were the worst in the nation and that heavy emphasis would be put on it. Message sent, but not getting through. I don't think I've ever seen a kickoff team, get penalized twice in one game for a delay of game penalty...much less in the same quarter. Roberts is killing us on kickoffs, cameras showed Sonny chewing his [deleted] on the sideline. Kickoff coverage is a head scratcher, because we have better athletes than last season, but, it's like watching the Keystone Cops out there...absolutely abysmal. Please tell our kick return players, that it's legal to block. If you have any of our games recorded, watch the opponents run by, around, or over, our so called blockers...inexcusable.
Trevor Denbow: Bless his heart, I am sure he is a wonderful kid and student, but, he has no business on a D1 squad. The ESPN crew even said, Memphis coaches are looking to throw wherever he is lined up. He is consistently week in week out, the worst tackler I have seen. Slow the tape down, as he approaches the ball carrier, he puts his head down, therefore losing eye contact and another whiff tackle happens. He killed us again last night.

Proud of the heart and effort, but, if the special teams were even just average...SMU would be 9-0 and near the top 10. Beat ECU!

Wow, that said it all, there is always things to improve on, Go Mustangs.

Fantastic summary. I’d only add how badly Proche was hobbling around between snaps and somehow still making amazing plays.

The only "curve" I would give would be to the offensive line. Was their play excellent, by no means, but we were playing catch up and passing at a nearly 3 to 1 ratio allowed the defensive line to pin their ears back and go after Buchelle.

The consistently errant snaps, however, cannot be excused.

docabel wrote:The only "curve" I would give would be to the offensive line. Was their play excellent, by no means, but we were playing catch up and passing at a nearly 3 to 1 ratio allowed the defensive line to pin their ears back and go after Buchelle.

The consistently errant snaps, however, cannot be excused.

We may have been playing catch up, but we abandoned the run game by the end of the 2nd drive. We could not run the ball at all. No curve. We're better than last year, but we are not good at moving bodies up front. That being said, I think these guys are giving us everything they have. We run about a million snaps per game, and they handle the tempo very well. That is why we run the ball so well in the second half of most games. Defensive linemen get worn down, and these cats take advantage of it. I give them credit for that. There is a ton of pressure on O-linemen in this offense, and they are handling it as well as they are capable of at this time.

Dukie wrote:Fantastic summary. I’d only add how badly Proche was hobbling around between snaps and somehow still making amazing plays.

No doubt. That cat is a warrior. He makes us all proud to be Mustangs. We're going to miss him next year. Truly special.

Dukie wrote:Fantastic summary. I’d only add how badly Proche was hobbling around between snaps and somehow still making amazing plays.

Glad you mentioned that. There were a few times he got up and I thought he was done for the night, yet there he was on the next play, the next series. That dude is so tough. It seems like you'd have to run him over to get him out of a game.

Too bad Onu transferred. He’s been elite at Colorado.

PNW_Stang wrote:Too bad Onu transferred. He’s been elite at Colorado.

I thought the same thing.

The ugliest by far was on Sunday on the trip back to Dallas in Arkansas. Between Little Rock and Texarkana we found ourselves in a “moving parking lot” due to construction and an accident. It took us nearly two hours to go 15 miles. Now, that was ugly!

so how was the crowd

TidePony wrote:The ugliest by far was on Sunday on the trip back to Dallas in Arkansas. Between Little Rock and Texarkana we found ourselves in a “moving parking lot” due to construction and an accident. It took us nearly two hours to go 15 miles. Now, that was ugly!

Should have used google maps with traffic, or waze. We hopped off I-30 and took SH67 around it.


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Please give an estimate of how many were in attendance for SMU?
Thanks

Dutch wrote:

TidePony wrote:The ugliest by far was on Sunday on the trip back to Dallas in Arkansas. Between Little Rock and Texarkana we found ourselves in a “moving parking lot” due to construction and an accident. It took us nearly two hours to go 15 miles. Now, that was ugly!

Should have used google maps with traffic, or waze. We hopped off I-30 and took SH67 around it.


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Right! We will next time!

Sections 114 (a ton of loud [God Bless THEM] frat boys across the top section), 115 (almost 100%), and 116 were majority Ponies, plus you could see small pockets of red throughout the stadium. I’m likely not a good judge, but close to 3,000 and maybe over that!

In three of the last 4 games, we seem to be trending in the wrong direction. The near disaster against Tulsa, lackluster performance against Houston, with the defense giving up huge chunk plays, and Memphis, where there is no reason we should have been in that game late, with all of the huge chunk plays, given up again by the defense....and the absolute "atrocious" play of our special teams. Special Teams will not get fixed this season, but, some creative Camouflage, can still be applied, to get us through the season. Beat ECU!