Was The Rise Real?

[ALEX LIFESON]

With the 7-6 season crashing to a gruesome end; many SMU fans have questioned if, "the rise is real" and if the culture has truly changed or not. After 3 recruiting classes, it was obvious that La Tech was had bigger, stronger and faster athletes...Sonny said the same thing in his post presser. We saw a team that had.. No Grit and Alot of Quit. What say you?

[BIGHORSE]

The "Rise" was fake!!!

[redpony]

the rise was as fake as the coach who claimed 'mission accomplished' and then ran off to swineville.

[JasonB]

I would suggest the door is still open. A lot of his better recruits were on the OL. We will see how those turn up over the next year.

That said, the fact that we went out and got two huge JUCO OT when our young OT were some of our biggest recruits is pretty telling.

What struck me last night is the group of redshirts was a lot smaller than in the past and had a lot of walkons. Did some of them bail?

[ponyte]

I would't base a thing on last nights game.

I'm not convinced Tech has overall better atheletes. Its hard to gauge a team with its coaching staff in tack that is laying to prove they can beat a better conference opponent vs. a team that just lost all its offensive coaches and head coach just a couple of weeks before the bowl game.

And we do have better athletes now than we did overall 3 years ago. We know we have deficiencies such as size and depth on the D line, overall lack of speed at the LB positions and too many young players in the secondary.

We need better kickers and we need to restock our receiver corp. And we can always use more linemen.

I wouldn't jump off a cliff until we have a couple of years of Dykes at the helm.

[RufusKing]

Tulsa showboat penalty, Cincy fumble and Tulane refs Pearle Vision moment away from being 4-8 / 5-7...we had some play makers, for sure, but we have really always had that, stat crunchers...J Wolf, Ramon, etc..the names escape me. Stats are for 4-8 teams, looking for some winners.

[gostangs]

I would't base a thing on last nights game.

I'm not convinced Tech has overall better atheletes. Its hard to gauge a team with its coaching staff in tack that is laying to prove they can beat a better conference opponent vs. a team that just lost all its offensive coaches and head coach just a couple of weeks before the bowl game.

And we do have better athletes now than we did overall 3 years ago. We know we have deficiencies such as size and depth on the D line, overall lack of speed at the LB positions and too many young players in the secondary.

We need better kickers and we need to restock our receiver corp. And we can always use more linemen.

I wouldn't jump off a cliff until we have a couple of years of Dykes at the helm.

So we are better, except for d line, o line, dbacks, receivers and linebackers? Oh and kickers.

Wonderful

[ponyte]

I would't base a thing on last nights game.

I'm not convinced Tech has overall better atheletes. Its hard to gauge a team with its coaching staff in tack that is laying to prove they can beat a better conference opponent vs. a team that just lost all its offensive coaches and head coach just a couple of weeks before the bowl game.

And we do have better athletes now than we did overall 3 years ago. We know we have deficiencies such as size and depth on the D line, overall lack of speed at the LB positions and too many young players in the secondary.

We need better kickers and we need to restock our receiver corp. And we can always use more linemen.

I wouldn't jump off a cliff until we have a couple of years of Dykes at the helm.

So we are better, except for d line, o line, dbacks, receivers and linebackers? Oh and kickers.

Wonderful

We are better, just don't have enough athletes to be a lot better. Its hard to built a strong defense with just 3 recruiting classes. Not sure if one remembers back to that last year before Morris, but it was far worse than today's defense.

One vast improvemnt are the takeaways. We have improved and that's due to better atheletes and coaching.

Kicking has been an issure for about a decade. Still, this punter is better than last year's punter that boomed out those monstrous 14-15 yard punts.

One example is our overall LB speed isnt there. But before Moris, our D line overall speed was abysmal. We have better atheletes on the D line, just not enough.

[MV pony]

I can't understand how La Tech and our peers can recruit better talent than SMU. Other teams go from 0-10 tp 10-0 in a couple of seasons and we are in year 30+. I'm hopeful Sonny is our Patterson.

[ericdickerson4life]

Last night was simply a team that was not prepared in any facet of the game and looked like they phoned it in from the first kickoff. I would not take a bunch of stock in the outcome vs. the direction this program has headed under Morris. Stallion has pointed out here multitudes of times that recruiting has gotten better and better each year under Morris. Dykes has a base to build off of, now it's his time to get to work.

[One Trick Pony]

More of a pi ss ha rd on

[SMU21TCU10]

I can't understand how La Tech and our peers can recruit better talent than SMU. Other teams go from 0-10 tp 10-0 in a couple of seasons and we are in year 30+. I'm hopeful Sonny is our Patterson.

I would imagine it is because SMU still has higher academic restrictions than those schools. Better than before June was hired, but still not enough to make us completely competitive with everyone else?

[gostangs]

I can't understand how La Tech and our peers can recruit better talent than SMU. Other teams go from 0-10 tp 10-0 in a couple of seasons and we are in year 30+. I'm hopeful Sonny is our Patterson.

I would imagine it is because SMU still has higher academic restrictions than those schools. Better than before June was hired, but still not enough to make us completely competitive with everyone else?

I don't think that is accurate. We can admit anyone we want who qualifies with NCAA (same as la Tech).

[Mexmustang]

Only if you love chewing gum, kite string and tin foil.

I realize we had a coaching change, but this was the last game of a long season. Did we forget how to play? LA Tech played Navy in last year's bowl and beat them. Remember how we played them? I think they're still scoring. They have better, faster players.

All year we knew we had no kicking game, no defense, a weak offensive line and poor QB play. We really had no quality wins and our record was padded by weak opposition. As one coach said, even if you don't have the players, at least you can win the kicking game!

Our QB wasn't the best player on the field for seven games. Even the QB's for North Texas and ASU were ranked higher than Hicks following our games. We obviously have no back up at that position or we would have seen him last night.

My only thought was that we lost because they didn't have a motivational video produced to get these kids ready to play a game. After all Van was there to tuck them in.

Looks like Arkansas bought a pig in a poke, how fitting.

[Digetydog]

I would't base a thing on last nights game.

I'm not convinced Tech has overall better atheletes. Its hard to gauge a team with its coaching staff in tack that is laying to prove they can beat a better conference opponent vs. a team that just lost all its offensive coaches and head coach just a couple of weeks before the bowl game.

And we do have better athletes now than we did overall 3 years ago. We know we have deficiencies such as size and depth on the D line, overall lack of speed at the LB positions and too many young players in the secondary.

We need better kickers and we need to restock our receiver corp. And we can always use more linemen.

I wouldn't jump off a cliff until we have a couple of years of Dykes at the helm.

Things are definitely better.
- Dykes can definitely coach offense. Regardless of what happens, we won't be going back to Year 1 June or Year 1 Chad offensive futility. With the Juco OL Dykes signed, we should have our best OL in at least a decade. Although he had a horrific game last night, Hicks is a serviceable college QB and Upshaw/Gillins might just challenge for the job. Our RB's may be the best in the AAC and the WR corps should be OK even if Quinn bolts.
- If the rumored DC hire is true, Dykes is making a bold move to improve the defense. Frankly, it could not get worse.