Happy Thursday, everyone. The women’s basketball team moved to 2-0 on the season with a 118-45 drubbing of New Orleans last night. Ace Austin is the leader of the squad, but everyone got in on the scoring action last night. The men return to action tomorrow night against Arkansas State.
The initial injury report came out for LSU, and most of the guys that we hope to see back on the field on Saturday are listed as questionable.
The Crimson Tide listed seven players on its first availability report of
the week, releases by the SEC on Wednesday ahead of Saturday’s game. Those included running back AK Dear, wide receiver Ryan Coleman-Williams, defensive back Zabien Brown, running back EJ Crowell, center Racin Delgatty, offensive guard William Sanders and defensive lineman Terrance Green.
UA head coach Kalen DeBoer had said earlier in the week that practices would determine who could go against the Tigers. He had said that Sanders would likely take longer to get on the field than some of the others.
It’s good to see Sanders on the questionable list, but it sounds like he will be out. Williams, Green, and Delgatty have been spotted in practice footage released this week, so there is hope for them. Lane Kiffin listed Whit Weeks as doubtful on the report but nobody is buying that. Whit has had this game circled for his return for Weeks now, pun intended.
Kalen DeBoer spoke on his radio show last night per usual. As you’d imagine, he has plenty of respect for this opponent.
“Just all-around complete football team,” the head coach said. “You know, playing better and better football as they go. Thought the last game against Auburn was impressive. The way they came out right away, jumped on them and had a good first quarter and then obviously continued that into the third quarter too. So didn’t need to have to keep the pedal down too much there in the fourth. But just you know, quarterback. I mean, guys, skill players around him. They’re more and more on the same page. A defensive front, actually, a defense as a whole, that just plays well together. Gets pressure on the passer and they’re at the top of the SEC and national rankings in a lot of areas, both offensively and defensively. So you know they’re a complete team.”
What does DeBoer see when watching LSU on tape?
“I think just attack,” he said. “I just think there’s an attacking mindset that the best teams in the country have and there’s that aggressiveness and it doesn’t always mean that the ball is going down the field offensively or it’s all these blitzes. It’s just an attacking mindset. Guys playing fast, guys playing confident.”
This is going to be a huge challenge. If you want to find some reason for optimism, look no further than the Kentucky game. That was no fluke, as the Wildcats led for more than half of that game and rolled up over 400 yards on the Tigers’ SEC leading defense. If you want to find reasons for pessimism, this LSU offense rolled up 552 yards at Auburn in their last outing, more than Georgia or Ole Miss managed against the Plainsmen.
LSU was without both Weeks and star TE Trey’dez Green, who has now returned to action. As always, hope for the best.
DeBoer also spoke about how they are practicing for crowd noise, which appeared to bother the Tide in Knoxville.
Crowd noise is piped in during practice. Communication is emphasized, especially between quarterback Keelon Russell and the rest of the offense against a defense that does “a great job trying to distract the guys and taking their vision off of what they need to concentrate on,” Alabama offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb said.
But DeBoer isn’t naive.
“Until you’re in it … there’s ways that you can practice for it, but these environments that we’re in, they’re different,” DeBoer said. “And we expect that here against LSU as well.”
Kiffin is pushing for rampant day drinking, as if that crowd needed any encouragement.
DeBoer was not interested in discussing the CFP rankings.
“We haven’t talked about it,” DeBoer said. “They’re going to see it, yeah. It’s around. I’m sure it’s on every sports station and then some. They’re going to see it, but they know it doesn’t really matter. We got to continue to just do our part, do our job and continue to move forward.”
Indiana coach Curt Cignetti, however, was more than willing to discuss the CFP rankings despite his team’s standing as the single most over-ranked on the list.
ESPN is a broadcast partner of the SEC, ACC and Big 12 but has no broadcast partnership with the Big Ten. ESPN also owns the rights to the College Football Playoff.
Cignetti alluded to the arrangement during his show as well.
“SEC gets a lot of love from ESPN and all their writers that they don’t technically pay but march to their drum,” he said. “And that’s why you see all these SEC teams up there and some good two-loss teams from the Big Ten not quite as high.”
Those are choice words for a coach that just needed overtime to survive a Minnesota squad that Mississippi State took to the woodshed on the road early in the season. Indiana is sitting 4th in the poll without a single ranked win, and several narrow escapes against unranked foes.
Nick Kelly wrote about all of the “uncles” Ivan Taylor has rooting for him, thanks to his father’s long NFL career in Pittsburgh.
McFadden is among a group of former Steelers considered Ivan’s uncles. None are related by blood. Just Super Bowls.
During his 12-year career with the Steelers, Ike won two Super Bowls (2005 and 2008 seasons) and played in a third (2010). Many of the same faces played in at least two of those Super Bowls with Ike, such as McFadden, Deshea Townsend (who was teammates at Alabama with Ivan’s position coach, Jason Jones), 2011 Pro Bowl safety Ryan Clark and Hall of Fame safety Troy Polamalu.
They all provided the example for Ivan. Now they root for the sophomore safety, a regular on the defense this season with two interceptions. Ivan and the No. 5 Crimson Tide are preparing to face No. 14 LSU on Saturday.
“It feels like all of us are winning when we see Ivan out there doing what he’s doing,” McFadden said.
Last, Bill Connelly wrote about what playoff expansion is all about.
Among the current top 12 in the CFP rankings are nine teams that finished last year in the top 12 of the year-end polls. We’ve enjoyed solid chaos levels, and we do have upstarts like UCLA and Kentucky — plus an unbeaten Utah — near the top. But even with the baked-in randomness of a four-round CFP, I’m not thinking the odds are great that we’re going to end up with some wild, unexpected semifinalists or finalists. Hopefully I’m wrong.
Hopefully the recent upsets continue and I have a reason to revisit this piece after the season. But for now, we’re only looking at a score of about 33 out of 50 on the 2007 scale. Granted, that might be as close as virtually any season of the last nearly two decades has come, but if nothing else, this exercise should have reminded us just how wacky 2007 really was. If all you got out of this exercise was a reminder of Les Miles’ ridiculousness and a search of “Pat White highlights” on YouTube, it was worth it.
All anyone wants is an upset. Some year, a blue blood is going to go unbeaten all year then lose on a fluke in the first round and everyone will celebrate. There will be 30 blood baths in those games for every one time it happens, and the best team probably won’t be crowned champion that season, but oh how the casuals will celebrate for a couple of days.
How fun.
That’s about it for now. Have a great day.
Roll Tide.
