It’s still there. Hanging in the air a little bit despite the fact that South Florida has moved on, which is all it can do after being demolished by Miami last Saturday.
Unless this team takes a tremendous step backward, USF will be ready for South Carolina State because that’s the next game on the schedule. That’s the thought process, the culture its coach, Alex Golesh, is building here.
You prepare for every opponent in the same way, whether it’s South Carolina State, a Championship Subdivision team which, in college football’s hierarchy, is a step down from USF, or Miami, which might be the best team in the country.
But even Golesh admitted the Miami game left a bad taste in his players mouths, in his mouth. It lingered longer, festered more, because the Bulls went into the Miami game with high hopes.
They had opened the season by knocking off two nationally ranked teams, Boise State and Florida, and beating Florida meant a lot because Florida, although it has stumbled a bit of late, is still the patriarch of college football in this state.
And next was Miami, and Miami has become good, very good, in the conversation as a possible national champion. And the question was, how would the Bulls measure up?
Golesh is succeeding at South Florida in part because he is getting his team view all its opponents objectively, and without emotion. You don’t look at Miami any differently than you do South Carolina State. That’s part of the “process” Golesh has hammered into his players week after week, game after game, and they are finally starting to understand it.
So USF did not fear Miami, did not think it had to do something out of the ordinary to win. This is a team which believes in itself.
But still, the implications of this game were clear, unavoidable. The first two wins had gotten USF national attention. If USF could beat Miami after beating Boise and Florida; well, the possibilities were almost unlimited.
And while USF’s players may be process driven, they are not robots. Neither are the coaches, or anybody else connected with the program. This was a chance to make a statement for this team and this school, and everyone was aware of that.
So it took a little longer to get over this loss than most. It carried over through the weekend because it was a missed opportunity.
Despite being outplayed for almost the entire game, USF managed to hang around for most of the first half. Nico Grammatica’s field goal made it 14-6 at one point in the second, putting the Bulls within a score, giving them some hope, and then it all came apart.
“That one (the Miami game) hurt, I think in so many ways, because it was a huge game in state against a really, really good football team and we didn’t play to the standard we wanted to play to,” Golesh commented on USF’s football website before he started concentrating on South Carolina State.
“So we had to handle it on Saturday night. We handled it on Sunday and I think even going into Monday morning up to our team meeting,” Golesh said. “We had to snap out of it, I had to snap out of it, we all had to snap out of it knowing that there’s a ton of football left.
“We haven’t even started conference play,” Golesh continued. “The fact that we’re playing a meaningful game like that that early in the season is certainly an indication we’re making strides as a program.
“The last part of it, and I said it after the game and I said it to our guys and I repeated it again on Monday morning, we as a program are going to be in that situation again and ultimately, I think until you’re in those situations over and over again, it’s really hard to simulate the level of focus, the level of precision that it takes to beat a team like that,” Golesh remarked.
“And again, I think they (Miami) are a really good team, I think a really complete team but ultimately, I think in a lot of ways, we are as well. And we’re gonna be in that situation again and the standard would be to certainly play better,” Golesh said.
And while there are no more Miamis on the schedule, there are a couple of good teams. And with wins over Boise and Florida in their pocket, the Bulls are still in position to make this the best season they’ve had. Ever.
