Gotta admit, I’m really nervous about this week’s game against KU for several reasons:
Utah was effectively eliminated from both the CCG and CFP races last week, so there’s no big “prize” left to play for. Worries me about the level of motivation the team will have. Don’t get me wrong, a 10-win season is phenomenal, but it’s all just positioning for what amounts to meaningless bowl games at this point.
A 10am MT start the day after Thanksgiving. Utah seems to never play well in day games, doubly so ones that kick off in the morning.
A defense that got completely exposed last week facing another elusive and mobile QB and will be down our best defensive player (Daley).
An opponent who is fighting for bowl eligibility.
I have zero doubt Utah is the better team here, but am awfully concerned about us coming out flat and laying an unmotivated egg on Friday.
But this team - and last year’s team - are built differently, IMO, even more mentally tough than a typical Whitt team.
Player leadership, culture, never-ever give up.
If we had lost the KSU game, maybe there’d be more resignation creep in, but Whitt, Devon, everyone interviewed after the K-State game said there was exactly zero weakening on the sidelines when it looked pretty bleak on Saturday.
Not saying we’re absolutely going to win, but I can promise you we’re going to bring it.
Yes and the KSU game was another game where the team wins but still has a lot to work on. I am not worried about the team being motivated to take KU to the woodshed.
Yeah, I don’t think we’re going to have a problem with the A gaps this week. lol
Talking with my sons about the fanbases of some of the other B-12 teams. The level of animosity & “intensified indifference” from Baylor fans toward Aranda (and by extension the AD and the President) is crazy. The West Virginia fans were also really negative about their own team and especially the coach, calling him “Retread Rich”, etc.
We saw how K-State’s coach reacted and what he revealed. Deeply personal motivation to win on Saturday, motivated by negative things your own fan base says about you and your players? Stupid levels of hard-core toxicity within that fan base toward their own coaches and players. Insanity.
Maybe some insight - 20 years ago I was coaching youth baseball with a guy who moved out here from Kansas. His family had a farm close to Kansas City, and as the suburbs kept expanding they decided to cash out and move somewhere that would be interesting, so they came to SLC. He said it is so different out here, people don’t get into sports nearly to the same level they do back in the Midwest. “At the end of the growing season we had nothing else to do but watch sports. Multiple big TVs in the living room, lots of drinking. Out here it’s completely different. Miss a week of sports to go to a national park? That would never happen back there”.
I really hope the basketball team improves how we all want, but until it does, I’m not going to stew about it. Too many other things to do.
IMO it feels like a “WTF?” loss type of game. I’ve been wrong about this team most of the season, so what do I know? I agree, the team should be able to handle the Jayhawks pretty handily but I,too, am nervous.
Fri morning game kind of sucks. But it is the 1st game of the weekend for the Big12, so we still need a win (+ASU win, +TTU loss Sat morning, +BYU win and hour later) to have a chance at the CCG. I think Arizona wins though and TTU wins easily, even in Morgantown (at 4-7, no bowl, just playing the spoiler).
I hope we come out, punch hard, and hold onto a lead. But my guess is they come out a little sluggish on a turkey-day tryptophan hangover and have to work 2nd half to pull away.
Someone at the game close said they thought it looked like a knee. From the replay on TV, looked like a knee. But when he left the field, they had a boot on him and not a knee brace. The way he turned, stepped, then hopped, seemed to appear like the same reaction as popped achilles by Kevin Durant or Aaron Rodgers. Seems you can kind of walk with ACL tear but achilles and you got floppy foot (but I’m not medical, just stayed in a Holiday Inn Express).
My wife took the ESPN win probability numbers for the four games that affect our chances to get the Big12 CCG and we’ve got a 3.2% chance. So I’m saying there’s a chance. I didn’t think there was one in 2022, so why not now?
My sister tore an ACL for the second time last year while doing a jump in a ballet class. She was 63 at the time. She kept doing ballet, skiing, and cycling and just couldn’t figure out why her leg never seemed to get strong. Finally got an MRI and they saw it. Now she’s wondering if she should get it fixed again or just wait until she’s so messed up she needs a whole knee. So, yes, you can walk and even do more with an ACL tear.
Most joint guys won’t repair an ACL after 50’s. But pwople can make compelling apeals. Thwres good evidence a percentage of athletes return to full activity without repair. I myself had a significant tear of my posterior cruciate ligament, which lends to party trick level of movement, and yet, I’m able ski and grapple without problems.
I think any CCG talk this week is a distraction and also a bit on the absurd side. Already sucks playing Friday morning on the road after Thanksgiving. Don’t need more pressure.
We got fully exposed defensively really two weeks in a row. And our offense was playing against teams with no defense.
They were still amazing wins and we still are able to have a 10-2 regular season.
But I don’t wanna be a dumb and dumber team. I want to win a bowl game and break the suckage streak.
We should look at KU as a monkey off our back game where we put a complete game together against a mediocre team to show we can play both sides well in the same game. The rest isn’t in our hands.
Oh and please let BYU lose just because they are BYU.
100%. That ship has sailed at this point, so let’s just finish strong. 10-2 would be a damn good season.
That said, it certainly sucks that 30 minutes of bad football (4th quarter against TT and BYU) over an entire 12-game season is the difference between CFP and a conference title and playing in a meaningless bowl game. ::sad trombone::
Our defense this year has been suffocating in most games - I think they’ll take what happened to them on Saturday personally. And they should.
A guy sitting next to us on Saturday, who left early and missed the fun, left in disgust and said that in 40 years of watching Utah football this was the worst defense he’d ever seen. We laughed at him, thinking of the Fassel years, but it turned out he was statistically right. (I will note that when it counted, the defense got it done - with the pick 2, the defensive stand to get the ball back down by three, and the interception to seal the win).
I’d wager a healthy sum that if we have any KU woes this game it WON’T be on the defensive side of the ball.
Saturday wasn’t the worst defense at Utah ever. Not even close. Utah defense in 1985-1989 under Fassel was much worse. Giving up 590 yards to Kansas St is nothing like the 590 yards Utah would routinely give up to WAC teams.
I remember going to Utah-UNM game in 1989. Utah won 41-39 but gave up 622 yards passing to a freshman QB named Jeremy Leach. It was absurd. In the Trib the next day, Dick Rosetta (remember him?) wrote a column titled “How Bad Can the Utes Get?” after the WIN.