One last question about 08 season ...

#1
orangebloodgmc

orangebloodgmc

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#1
I need to let this go and move on, but can someone tell me, who's call was it to switch the UAB and UCLA games ... is that all on Hamilton? For better or worse, that decision changed history.
 
#2
#2
I'm failing to see how that would have made any difference in last year's outcome.
 
#4
#4
You shake out a lot of the bugs in the very first game, especially if against a cupcake where you play young players and let them make correctable mistakes while you still notch a win. THEN you play the UCLA, which looked to me like a very close and winnable game, and a w there gives that much more confidence toward FL and Aub. You disagree with any of that?
 
#5
#5
Cupcakes give game experience. You start out with a UCLA and it just went down from there. ALWAYS, schedule a cupcake to open with.
 
#9
#9
UCLA is a cupcake for a traditional UT team. last year, as you point out, we were undisciplined and had a weak offense, therefore, a team like UCLA goes from a cupcake to a team that can beat us, as they proved. with the problems we had, a true cupcake wouldve been best right off the back. the UCLA set us off on the wrong foot. theres no reason we couldnt have won 8 games last year.

this year, we got WKU then UCLA. booya.
 
#10
#10
UCLA had nothing to do with the tackling and the blocking. It was on the coaches to get that straighten out. We could have open with Maryville and that still wouldn't have helped us over come the lack of discipline and talent that had fallen off the Vol teams of late. You win in the off season and during the week of preparation the product on the field was the evidence that the former staff had lost the handle of those products.
 
#12
#12
We could have started with UCF and the result would not have been pretty. The level of coaching was the same in all the games last year regardless of who our opponent was that week.
 
#13
#13
I believe that the decision to switch games was from a request by ESPN so they could televise the game on Labor Day, so I suspect Mike Hamilton had to ok it with support from Coach Fulmer. The game was winnable if we had played the second half like we did the first half. IMHO, it came doown to the failure of both the OC and DC to make adjustments to the adjustments UCLA made at halftime, particularily continuing to playour secondary deep whie UCLA passed us silly underneath.
 
#14
#14
There's something to be said about gaining the confidence from an easy win before going into a tougher opponent. But then, like others pointed out, we even lost to Wyoming. I shudder to think, what if we had started against UAB and lost?:mega_shok:
 
#15
#15
Athensvol said:
I believe that the decision to switch games was from a request by ESPN so they could televise the game on Labor Day, so I suspect Mike Hamilton had to ok it with support from Coach Fulmer. The game was winnable if we had played the second half like we did the first half. IMHO, it came doown to the failure of both the OC and DC to make adjustments to the adjustments UCLA made at halftime, particularily continuing to playour secondary deep whie UCLA passed us silly underneath.
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You mean the gameplan could have been adjusted after the game kicked off? :wacko:

Actually, that's one of the things I am sooooo looking forward to seeing out of this new coaching staff. Monte adjusting the D multiple times to match adjustments made by the opposing O...
:rock:
 
#16
#16
all true. theres no gaurantee that we would have rolled over wyoming or UAB in week one. its only a thought, but COULD it have been different had we won the first game? obviously we wont know, but does a team get the necessary confidence off an early win? i guess we will find out this season...
 
#18
#18
I don't think UCLA was a cupcake game necessarily, but the first half, our secondary was having them for dinner with 4 ints. Chow made the adjustment at half time to throw under the coverage and take what we were giving them (at least about 10 yds or more). Chavis never made the adjustment to ome up and challenge them on that and they just ate us up there the rest of the game. That said, if our ofense had been better, it should not have mattered.
 
#19
#19
Athensvol said:
I don't think UCLA was a cupcake game necessarily, but the first half, our secondary was having them for dinner with 4 ints. Chow made the adjustment at half time to throw under the coverage and take what we were giving them (at least about 10 yds or more). Chavis never made the adjustment to ome up and challenge them on that and they just ate us up there the rest of the game. That said, if our ofense had been better, it should not have mattered.
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The fumble inside the 10 to start the 2nd half was a sign of things to come. They still were working with a 3rd string, one-legged quarterback. It should not have mattered.
 
#20
#20
J-P said:
There's something to be said about gaining the confidence from an easy win before going into a tougher opponent. But then, like others pointed out, we even lost to Wyoming. I shudder to think, what if we had started against UAB and lost?:mega_shok:
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This is all true, but we should admit that Wyoming was a special case. No, there's no way we should have lost to them, but remember that Coach Phil was fired in the days just before that game, and some of our players said that they were shocked by this or at least they were majorly distracted and not focused like they shoulda been.

We'll never know, but I feel that since it was some serious execution mistakes that caused us to lose to UCLA, a previous game under our belts might have sharpened us enough to have beaten them (tho they would have been sharper too). I just think going in vs Aub at 2-1 rather than 1-2, we'd have had more confidence. If wins over UCLA and Auburn, then probably Wyoming also, and CPF is still the coach, for better or for worse.

If Hamilton made that call, I wonder if he learned anything from it.
 
#21
#21
orangebloodgmc said:
This is all true, but we should admit that Wyoming was a special case. No, there's no way we should have lost to them, but remember that Coach Phil was fired in the days just before that game, and some of our players said that they were shocked by this or at least they were majorly distracted and not focused like they shoulda been.
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I guess I sometimes forget the trauma leading up to that game. I just wish I could forget the game itself... :furious3: :no:
 
#24
#24
hohenfelsvol said:
We could have started with UCF and the result would not have been pretty. The level of coaching was the same in all the games last year regardless of who our opponent was that week.
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Yeah the Northern Illinois and Wyoming games showed that.
 
#25
#25
orangebloodgmc said:
It is being handled differently this season. We shall see.
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Execution mistakes, although numerous, did not cause us to lose the UCLA game. We were totally outcoached. They made adjustments and we did not.

But if I understand your premise, if we played UAB first, we could have worked through our execution problems and the confidence of that win could have prevented the execution problems that we saw all year.

Do you really think that the execution problems that we saw all year were because of a lack of confidence? At what point does coaching come into play?
 
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