Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
hambone29
I agree with all that T1. No doubt we were playing conservative. And I'm not saying it was all on Holtz. It ultimately comes down to player execution and Sokol was definitely affected by the wet ball. But when your offense is struggling, it's on the coach to make an adjustment. In the 3 losses mentioned, we didn't seem to make any adjustments, for good or bad. Yesterday was different considering weather, but Marshall had to play in the same conditions and they managed to complete passes and move the chains in the second half while we couldn't.
I agree. That was a very experienced offense / QB though. They struggled as much as we did. They just made a few more plays and now they are champions. That's what champions do. We were kind of fortunate to even be in this game considering this team was kind of thrown together over the last year.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
eagle2180
Actually, I believe he uses a situational chart to help him make the critical decisions. I heard him discuss it in a radio interview.....which would explain some of the odd decisions and poor uses of TO's.
One major issue is that chart is not static and it takes logic and other math-related skills to adjust it for the immediate situation at hand. Similar to a basic hit or hold chart for blackjack.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
RunwayDawg55
Y'all just keep sucking the Holtz teet. Don't act surprised though when we have a couple of years where we are really up and a couple of years where we are really down with him. If you're drinking the kool-aid that makes you believe he is the savior coach for La Tech, I feel sorry for you. The overall conference sucks and sets him up to look better than he is. Just watch.
I feel sorry that you can't seem to find any pleasure in anything short of perfection. It will be a frustrating life when other people don't live up to your unreasonable and impossible to achieve expectations. Do you have any lucid or rational reasons for believing Holtz to be the worst coach in the game? Most schools of our size will have up and down seasons. If you have $20 million, give it to Tech athletics and maybe Tech will satisfy you, but I doubt it. We, as fans, choose to live vicariously through Tech's football team. To be disappointed because we are coached by a human being, with all the inherent flaws, who is not perfect and makes mistakes is understandable. To demand them to be perfect is not.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
tenacious_dog
Proud of the players thay stepped up for the schmuck starters that FLUNKED OUT. Mahaffery played a great game. And the linebacker Villevez (?) decleated their hoss back Johnson when he was pass blocking and put him on the bench. Made other good plays too.
We didn't miss them AT ALL!
Good post. I agree...hats off to the NEW STARTERS that stepped in when the other guys let everybody down. I thought Ricky Jones played a heck of a game as a blocking fullback too. IMO, Tech didn't see a lot of dropoff from the 5 missing starters.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
stodgdog
I feel sorry that you can't seem to find any pleasure in anything short of perfection. It will be a frustrating life when other people don't live up to your unreasonable and impossible to achieve expectations. Do you have any lucid or rational reasons for believing Holtz to be the worst coach in the game? Most schools of our size will have up and down seasons. If you have $20 million, give it to Tech athletics and maybe Tech will satisfy you, but I doubt it. We, as fans, choose to live vicariously through Tech's football team. To be disappointed because we are coached by a human being, with all the inherent flaws, who is not perfect and makes mistakes is understandable. To demand them to be perfect is not.
This! if Nick Saben got fired from Alabama and we hired him. Some people would say "why did we hire someone who just got fired?"
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
johnnylightnin
I wasn't either, but that doesn't excuse giving the game away when we were in control.
I didn't expect to be 8-4, but that doesn't make losing to ODU and NSU okay.
I've seen several posts along those lines. As if it's okay to underperform now because we over performed earlier. That makes no sense to me.
Thank you Johnny. Good post. CHAMPIONS figure out a way to get it done.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
cscollis
Holtz may not be the savior but he deserves credit for getting the pieces together to get to the championship game. He is recruiting much better HS talent than the previous coaches. Some of his calls were ultra conservative, welcome to the B10. Could our O have been better in the championship game, yes. I wish he had the same killer instinct against MU as he did against Rice. I hope he realizes we would rather lose being agressive than lose close at the end of the game from playing not to lose.
Holtz needs to learn how to win CLOSE games. This year, when we won we typically blew people out, or we lost the game altogether. As someone mentioned earlier, we lost all of the close ones this year (NSU, ODU & Marshall).
I thought Holtz lost the Marshall game in the 3rd quarter, when he refused to admit that his QB was having a TERRIBLE day, and insisted on making Sokol throw. At that point, I was screaming at my TV --and posting on this thread-- that LA Tech should have gone exclusively to our ground game. At one point in the 3rd quarter, Tech picked up 9 yards with Dixon on a 1st down run, and another 5 yards (and converted the 1st down) with Jared Craft on back to back plays. Marshall couldn't stop us.
So what does Holtz do next? He let's Sokol throw two incomplete passes, and ran a trick play "end around" on the ensuing downs. (Yes, in this horrible weather.) And this was at a point in the game where "ball control" and "field position" were of extreme importance. Holtz blew it. I KNEW at that point, we were DONE. I knew Holtz had already made a deadly mistake, because he literally couldn't see what we could see; that Tech needed to run the ball down Marshall's throat until Marshall stopped it.
There were other "oddities" in this game too. Coming out of the locker room to start the 2nd half, why did Holtz make Hunter Lee our primary RB --with back-to-back carries-- to start the 3rd quarter? Everybody knows I like Hunter Lee....but was Hunter Lee (coming off a broken collar bone surgery) really our best option coming out of the locker room? Where was Dixon and Craft? Like so many other decisions Holtz made yesterday, this one seemed very puzzling.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
johnnylightnin
Play action from the big bone would've been nice on 3rd and short. I like the few deep attempts. I wish we would've tried to keep the pedal down. We've had 3 games decided by less than a TD...lost all three.
I though play action to the TE would have been an excellent call in that situation. Of course, I believe in throwing to the TE every pass play.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
hambone29
How bout figure out a way to complete a pass.
Maybe I am unfamiliar with rules of football these days as they have changed, but when I played the coach was not eligible to throw a pass during a game
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
RunwayDawg55
DAMN you are hitting that kool-aid hard. Holtz doesn't have a clue what the hell he really needs to do to win in situations like today and it SHOWED. It showed before the game. When is the last time we had FIVE players DQed for academic ineligibility?!?! Holtz is the head coach and he should be on top of stuff like that to make sure we don't show up the morning of a championship game minus 5 (and it very easily could have been 6 if Dixon didn't win his appeal) heavy hitters due to some stupid crap. It showed during the game with his sloppy play calling and questionable decisions at critical times. And it showed throughout the season when we got lucky a number of times in conference play against some horrible opponents.
Yeah, this game was sloppy as hell cause of the weather, but Marshall played in the exact same conditions today. The difference is they made the right calls at the right times and Holtz did not. Good job for him for scraping by to get to a conference championship and a bowl game and save his paycheck for a couple of more years, but scraping by isn't what I want this program to be. The highlights on the road to today were fun, but damn how quickly some of you forget the lows we faced as well. For christ sake, we got beat by and FCS team because of this guy. And when's the last time he won an OOC game against a P5 school? Yeah, Auburn was competitive, but that was all on Diaz. Once again today Diaz and the Defense extended themselves as far as they could to try and save the asses of the rest of the team but it didn't work. And a big part of the reason it didn't work was Holtz and his questionable play calling/decision making process.
This is a SUPERB post. I agree with it 100%. I know some of our BB&B'ers have expressed problems with RunwayDawg55, but he NAILED it with the post above. All LA Tech fans should be VERY ANGRY with Skip Holtz and the way he handled so many of our players being declared academically ineligible on the morning of the CUSA CHAMPIONSHIP game.
This was very embarrassing for a school that reportedly holds itself to a higher academic standard. And Holtz needs to be held accountable for that. Yes, the players are accountable first and foremost, but the Head coach GETS PAID to monitor their academic progress, and to make sure that we don't show up on the morning of the Conference Championship game minus 6 players, including 5 starters. If I pulled a stunt like this at my workplace, I'm quite sure they would fire me.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
HogDawg
Good post. I agree...hats off to the NEW STARTERS that stepped in when the other guys let everybody down. I thought Ricky Jones played a heck of a game as a blocking fullback too. IMO, Tech didn't see a lot of dropoff from the 5 missing starters.
I agree! I love that the missing starters were not missed at all, as far as I could tell. And, the entire starting OL from yesterday will be back next year. Encouraging. Just need a QB.
V the LB played his best game of the year. I loved his hit on their big RB, which put that dude back on the bench for the rest of the game.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
johnnylightnin
I wasn't either, but that doesn't excuse giving the game away when we were in control.
I didn't expect to be 8-4, but that doesn't make losing to ODU and NSU okay.
I've seen several posts along those lines. As if it's okay to underperform now because we over performed earlier. That makes no sense to me.
Tech didn't give the game away. If one didn't see the games we've played and relied on this board for game info, one would conclude that we weren't playing opposing players and coaches equally committed to winning the game and wonder how the grass kept tripping our players.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
I wonder how much the weather affected our receivers and their ability to get open, get separation from Marshall's DBs. When we did throw, I didn't see very many wide open receivers. It's really hard to tell since TV doesn't show the whole field.
I think maybe we're not giving enough credit to Marshall's DBs and/or fault to our WRs.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cscollis
Holtz may not be the savior but he deserves credit for getting the pieces together to get to the championship game. He is recruiting much better HS talent than the previous coaches. Some of his calls were ultra conservative, welcome to the B10. Could our O have been better in the championship game, yes. I wish he had the same killer instinct against MU as he did against Rice. I hope he realizes we would rather lose being agressive than lose close at the end of the game from playing not to lose.
I agree with your post. As you are a former player, I assume your last sentence is from a player's perspective. I also believe that Holtz made his decisions based on what he thought gave Tech the best chance of winning the game.
Re: 12/6 @ Marshall (C-USA Championship game)
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Originally Posted by
hambone29
Well, for starters, you don't continue doing what you're doing. Plan A not working, what is plan B? Today was a mirror image of last year. We had a QB that was struggling, and we didn't seem to help him with playcalling. As the playcaller, you have to help your QB find a rhythm when he is struggling. Quick passes, short throws, roll-outs, screens, anything to get a few completions. Holtz didn't do it last year with our subpar QBs, and he didn't do it today.
Excellent post, hambone. I said very similar things during the game back earlier in this thread. For those with to much time o their hands, they can go back and read it.:icon_wink:
In the 3rd Qtr it was obvious to me that Sokol was having a HORRIBLE day at the office. It was obvious to me --especially under these weather conditions-- that we needed to rely more on our strong ground game, and a short, high percentage, passing game that included middle screen passes, shovel passes (which we haven't run all season), quick slants, etc... ANYTHING that doesn't require Sokol to have to stand in the pocket 5 seconds to throw the ball down field.
It just wasn't obvious to Holtz. He was out-coached once again.