SB Nation User Blog: Richard Pittman

Ole Miss 31 - LSU 13: No Thoughts Tonight

Richard Pittman — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 01:48:25 -0000

Thoughts will come tomorrow.

Ole Miss @ LSU Game Thread

Richard Pittman — Mon, 26 May 2008 12:46:03 -0000

Post your wistful Ed Orgeron remembrances here.

Senior Day

Richard Pittman — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 03:15:59 -0000

Not a picture of a hot coed.

It's a big day on Saturday for a number of seniors playing their last games at Tiger Stadium. Impact seniors on this team include 3-year-starters Herman Johnson (pictured above), Darry Beckwith, Brett Helms, Tyson Jackson, Charles Alexander, and Colt David. Two-year-starters include Quinn Johnson, Kirston Pittman, Curtis Taylor, and Demetrius Byrd. Other seniors include Marlon Favorite, Tremaine Johnson, Brady Dalfrey, and Ryan Miller.

This is an incredibly accomplished group of seniors, and they want to go out on a good note. Kirston Pittman remains (for now) the only college football player ever to play for two BCS national championship winners. A handful of Tigers from the 2007 team were on the 2003 team as well, but only Cousin Kirston actually played in the game.

I would like to give these guys a great send-off, to make up for their penultimate Tiger Stadium game last week. Yes, after the rousing success of the last several years, this year's seniors may not have met their goals for this particular season, but if it ends right it will still be a very good season to top off a bunch of great careers.

So, if you're going to this game, please show these guys all the love you can. They've earned it in the last 4 to 6 years.

Week 12: Around the SEC, Part 2

Richard Pittman — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:31:15 -0000

I'm a little late this week in getting to this segment, as I've been more interested in doing other things. And considering the deafening silence this "Around the SEC" feature usually gets in the comments, I may consider discontinuing it, or perhaps retooling it in such a way that it features more photos of hot coeds.

For example.

LSU 40
Troy 31

Alright, it's not like we've been silent on this game so far. We all know what happened. We all know that I was among the people who got pretty upset about the fan behavior, both in the stadium and on the interwebs. But, there are a few finer points that deserve mention.

Redshirt freshman defensive back Phelon Jones got more playing time in this game than he saw in the rest of his career combined. He was the dime, or perhaps the nickel, for much of the night, and the Troy offense focused on him heavily.

Troy threw the ball a whopping 72 times and 36 of those times they threw Phelon Jones' way. He started a little slowly but he got better when the rest of the team got better. Towards the end of the game, he was shutting everyone down left and right same as Patrick Peterson and Chris Hawkins were. I'm sure it was a very memorable night for him.

Florida 56
South Carolina 6

I'll just say I called this one. South Carolina is a solid team, much improved from its very uninspired open to the season. They're solid. Solid is good. "Solid" isn't nearly good enough to be beat Florida. The Gators are great.

Vandy 31
Kentucky 24

Congrats Commies! They have made it to 6 wins for the first time since football players wore leather helmets, which was back in the early 1980s. As already discussed, they did it by riding their inconsistent senior quarterback, Chris Nickson, who had one of the best games of his life.

Kentucky, who had been looking good for a pretty decent bowl, slides down to one of the lesser ones. There's still no telling which one though.

Ole Miss: Preview

Richard Pittman — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:05:10 -0000

This is the second image that comes up when you google "ole miss football" without the quotation marks. Don't believe me? Try it.

What is there to say about Ole Miss? They are a solid team. Unspectacular, but solid. They rank 5th in the SEC in scoring offense (although the teams behind them are generally considered wretched, and their own ranking is skewed by their 59 point explosion against ULM). They are 7th in scoring defense (ahead of LSU, btw, but they give up a ton of yards where they rank 11th in the SEC).

It seems strange to me that they are 3rd in the conference in rushing offense, and that they are actually 2nd in the league in yards per carry. I would not have guessed that, as no one on Ole Miss strikes me as being all that great of a runner. Statistics don't lie, though, but I guess they will sometimes fib, or lie by omission.

The Ole Miss weaknesses include being last in the SEC in passing defense. By a lot. They are extremely vulnerable to the pass, and I hope we can take advantage of that. Their personnel in the secondary was expected to be subpar this season, and it is meeting that expectation. They are giving up 225 yards per game in the air, which is 16 yards more per game than the 11th place team. It's not a fluke, as they are also last in the SEC in passing efficiency defense, which is at bottom a rating of yards per attempt with a few weighting factors thrown in.

Ole Miss is all around solid on special teams, and excels at covering kickoffs. Who would have guessed that LSU would be last in the SEC at kickoff return average?

That's all well and good, but what should we expect? The Ole Miss offense revolves around Jevan Snead and Dexter McCluster. The former is a very talented passer who still hasn't quite put it all together. The latter runs a "Wild Rebel" formation that has been effective, but not nearly as effective as the Wild Hog run by Darren McFadden was. To illustrate, Darren McFadden was a solid passer, while Dexter McCluster has attempted 4 passes, two of which have been intercepted and the other two of which fell incomplete. His passer rating is -100.

No, when McCluster is taking the snap it will almost certainly be a run, and while he's good at it, he's no Darren McFadden at that either.

The Rebels with Snead behind center is pretty scary, as Ole Miss has some very athletic receivers and Snead has a tremendous arm. His arm is just about as good as Matthew Stafford's, but his decision making and accuracy aren't quite up to that level yet.

With Snead back there, they feature a running back by committee approach with Cordera Eason, Brandon Bolden (true freshman from Baton Rouge), and Enrique Davis all getting the ball several times per game. They're very similar backs physically, as all 3 are listed at between 5'10" and 6'0" and all are listed between 220# and 224#. Eason has been the more effective lately, averaging over 7.0 yards per carry in each of the last two games, and scoring more than 100 yards in each.

Defensively, Ole Miss features an athletic defensive line that is a very good match for LSU's solid offensive line, particularly if Greg Hardy is healthy, which is unknown to me right now. When healthy, Hardy is one of the very best players in the conference regardless of position, and he is a handful for any tackle when he rushes off the end.

As mentioned, their secondary has problems, but if they have their best personnel on the field they will pressure the passer. This is one of those guys where Lee will either tear it up, or get torn up, depending on how it plays out.

I think we learned our lesson last week that we cannot have success if we are one-dimensional. We need to pass, and we need to run. We need to be unpredictable, and passing at unpredictable times gives Jarrett Lee the best chance for success.

It's also senior night, and we'll have more on that later.

The Cotton Bowl usually pits a Big 12 team vs. a Southeastern Conference team. But the Cotton Bowl...

Richard Pittman — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:57:49 -0000

The Cotton Bowl usually pits a Big 12 team vs. a Southeastern Conference team. But the Cotton Bowl can select Notre Dame over an SEC team once in the next two years.

And apparently, they just might bypass the SEC this year, which could be bad news for LSU,

Week 12: Around the SEC, Part 1

Richard Pittman — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:57:10 -0000

OK, now that we've gotten a few things off of our chests, it's time to get down to the business of looking at SEC football. There weren't really any big surprises this week. All the clear favorites won, and there was really only one game that appeared to be a 50-50 game going in. As expected, one of them won it. Does it really matter who?

Oh, OK, I guess it matters, especially to Vandy.

This week, instead of looking at the games in chronological order, we'll just take a look at them in random order.

Vandy 31
Kentucky 24

Did anyone notice that the Kentucky basketball team lost to VMI on Friday night? Well, the weekend didn't get any better for Kentucky athletics. Staring an opportunity for a pretty good bowl in the face, Kentucky fell behind early and never recovered. Now, instead of sitting at 7 wins with a winnable game against Tennessee looming in the future, they sit at 6 wins with a losable game and a date in the I-Bowl still a possibility (on the low side).

Yes, I know that Vandy is a solid team. And congratulations to them for gutting out a much-needed win. They rode out a career night by the normally inconsistent Chris Nickson (155 yards passing with 3 touchdowns, 118 yards rushing) and the versatile DJ Moore (two touchdown receptions and two interceptions). I have a feeling one of those guys will be in consideration for an award later on this week.

Now Vandy is one of 8 bowl-eligible teams in the SEC, and there probably won't be any more added to the list. They have two more games in which to jockey for position.

Georgia 17
Auburn 13

A missed extra point came back to bite Auburn, who actually showed a bit of life in this game. I wouldn't have expected this one to be this close, but Georgia did a good job of putting up enough yards and points to get the win. It wasn't easy.

After trading punts for a while, Auburn scored the first points of the game late in the first, but missed an extra point. They maintained the lead for most of the second quarter, but fell behind 7-6 by halftime. Auburn re-took the lead in the 3rd quarter, and Georgia again took the lead with a pretty touchdown pass to AJ Green.

Auburn was driving late and got into the red zone, but couldn't get into the end zone, failing on a 4th down attempt, finally sealing the game for the Bulldawgs. Had they made the extra point on their first touchdown, they could have kicked a field goal.

UGA remains the clear #3 team in the conference with 9 wins, poised for a Cap One Bowl slot unless they somehow sneak into the BCS. It's a disappointing season that was supposed to see Georgia play for the BCS National Championship, but injuries along the line seem to have killed that possibility.

Auburn remains at 5 wins, and time is running out to get a 6th. They have one more game, and it's the Iron Bowl. I know that anything is possible in the SEC, but this is a real long shot.

Ole MIss 59
UL-Monroe 0

Well, this certainly wasn't the 2007 ULM-Bama game. LSU didn't have the biggest quarter in the SEC this week. Ole Miss scored 31 points in the second quarter, scoring a touchdown on the first play and a field goal on the last, along with 21 points in between.

In beating ULM, Ole Miss is now bowl-eligible, and they head to Baton Rouge as a pretty hot team, winners of 3 in a row including this blowout. The team they just blew out, by the way, beat Troy earlier this year.

We'll See a New Attitude

Richard Pittman — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:38:09 -0000

This week has been marked by the LSU fan base getting an earful from a lot of different quarters. First, ESPN commented on the empty seats during the broadcast of the Alabama vs. Mississippi State game. Second, this blog and many other printed quarters delivered editorials on the sorry state of some small section of our fans. Third, Troy coach Larry Blakeney commented on how his team ran the fans out of Tiger Stadium.

And most recently, the LSU players have gotten in on the action:

"The fans' leaving did kind of upset me," [starting offensive lineman Herman] Johnson said. "Then they did upset me when they started to boo. It was weird to see the fans leaving. It was crazy. The coaches were really upset with (fans).

"They are the home fans and they are supposed to cheer us. Hopefully, the fans will stay next week and not boo us.

Senior kicker Colt David acknowledged that it bothered him to see the stands more than half empty.

"I'd like to have the fans here," David said. "That's what makes Tiger Stadium. It hurts when they leave. The ones who stayed are the true fans."

Yikes. If that doesn't tell the tale, I don't know what will.

With all this said, I think starting now you will see a different attitude from the LSU fan base. I think the "negatigers" as they have been called have been somewhat chastened, and they will slink away for a while. The more positive elements are conversely emboldened and you will see them make a point of being more vocal.

Once again, let me reiterate that I think it is perfectly OK to be critical of a coaching staff or even a player to a point. It's even OK to call on that coach to be fired or the player to be benched. Heck, I know I've done it.

There comes a point when fans become fixated on criticism to the exclusion of all else, and to the point where it really does bleed over into the team's performance and the strength of a program.

A lot of people don't agree with that, that fans can weaken a team, but if you believe that a good group of fans can strengthen a team, why is it so hard to believe that a bad group of fans can weaken it? After all, a good crowd is the essence of a home field advantage. And I think pretty much everyone will agree that the home field advantage exists in sports at least to some degree. If good fans give you a home field advantage, why can't bad fans give you a disadvantage? Or at least minimize the advantage?

And then there's the recruiting angle. If the raucous Tiger Stadium crowd is a recruiting draw, why can't a dysfunctional and overly critical crowd be repulsive to recruits? If you believe that being a good fan can help your team, you absolutely have to believe that being a bad fan can hurt it.

But I digress. I think the era of negativity among our fans has closed. It reached its zenith late in the 3rd quarter last Saturday night, and you won't see that any more.

Week 12: ATVSSECOSPPOW

Richard Pittman — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 02:13:49 -0000

There were some good choices available for the ATVSSECOSPPOW this week. We could have gone with Percy Harvin of Florida, who had 167 yards rushing on only 8 carries. We could have gone with LSU's own Brandon Lafell, who had 12 receptions for 126 yards and a touchdown. But no, today we go with one of the more maddeningly inconsistent players in the league, who put up great numbers this week:

Sadly, this picture is from two years ago. I couldn't find one of this week's game with Chris Nickson in it. At least this has the right player going against the right team.

Vanderbilt's Chris Nickson had one of those great days he has a couple times a year. This time, he completed 15 of 27 passes for 155 yards, with 3 touchdowns and 0 interceptions, and ran for 118 yards on 20 carries. This is someone who sometimes plays so poorly that he can't keep his starting job.

Nickson was most of the offense on this night, as he went the whole way at QB and also led the team in rushing. It took putting the ball into the hands of Nickson and turning cornerback DJ Moore loose on offense to get the key 6th victory of the season that guarantees Vandy a bowl spot this year.

They had come up just short of bowl eligibility each of the last two years.

The Great Push Back

Richard Pittman — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:58:10 -0000

Well, there has been quite a boisterous hew and cry from the masses lately. Yesterday, all throughout the LSU intertubes, the Silent Majority pushed back against the force of unrelenting negativity. There was my post about it, then Poseur's post, and then there was a post at Bayou Bengal Blog, a truly epic post about the state of the program in general:

And then for the last 20 minutes of the game, when at long last LSU finally began to put some things together, we got to see not only the performance we should have seen all game, but actual brilliance. LSU played sensational defense, they found a comfort level for Jarrett Lee, they found some new leadership to replace the unremarkable/lackluster/failed leadership they've been getting and most of all they charted a course for the program to return to relevance as a championship contender.

...

Last, the booing. I noticed that it died off big-time as the crowd thinned out during the game, and so if you're one of the folks who booed and THEN left early I hope you'll e-mail me with your place of work so we can get up a group of folks to show up at your office, boo you and then punch out in time for a three-martini lunch. But what I don't understand is why these cretins persist in booing Jarrett Lee. What are you trying to gain from doing that? Are you booing because you want to see Jordan Jefferson? Congratulations. He played enough to prove why Lee is the starting quarterback. Do you want Andrew Hatch? He's still in a walking boot. Ryan Perrilloux? He can't hear you.

Read the whole thing. It's a great read.

After reading all of this and the reactions on the message boards, I think it is safe to say that the bulk of the LSU universe has soundly rejected the intense negativity shown by a few scattered but disproportionately audible people.

I do so hope the team can build on that second half, with the myriad strategic adjustments made on both sides of the ball, and find a "sweet spot" where this team can have success. It is not out of the question that this team could still finish in the top 10 if we win out, and there are no more Floridas, Georgias, or Alabamas on our regular season schedule. All that remains are games against Ole Miss and Arkansas, both of whom are capable but neither of whom can be described as outstanding.

It's good to see the fans reject the harsh negativity, which only makes us look whiny and desperate. And yes, it is entirely possible that a whiny and desperate fan base actually hurts the program. It's good to know that the whiny and desperate aren't the majority, but only a small and vocal minority that is finally getting seriously challenged.