college sports

so i like college sports, especially univ. of kentucky basketball and univ. of south carolina football. it's the time of the year when the only thing to pay attention to in sports is major league baseball, and that's fine. for a while. i am also a big fan of the atlanta braves, but when it boils down to it, i'm realistically only going to be watching the majority of about one braves games every couple of weeks, so i guess i'm not as big of a baseball fan as some people are...

so back to kentucky basketball and south carolina football. i could not be more excited about either one.

uk's new coach, billy gillispie, has been better than advertised. how is that possible, considering he has yet to coach a single game at rupp arena as our new coach? one word: recruiting. gillispie has been on fire in the one area that tubby smith proved to be so inadequate at during his otherwise great tenure in lexington. the biggest accomplishment was the signing of 5-star recruit patrick patterson within weeks of landing the job. add that to the written or oral commitments of 5 other highly-recruited players for this coming year or the next two or three years in his first 3 months on the job, and i give billy a 12 out of 10 in terms of fitting into his new role as king of kentucky basketball.

prediction: the wildcats finish 2nd in the s.e.c. east behind tennessee, get a #3 ranking in the ncaa tourney and lose in the elite 8. billy's got some serious talent to coach with this year, but not quite enough to challenge the north carolina's, georgetown's, and kansas' of the world this season.

usc obviously has the most brilliant offensive mind in college football in sir steven orr spurrier (or "sos," as the message board's refer to him). if you need any proof of the previous sentence, ponder these statistics: the florida gators prior to s.o.s NEVER won more than 10 games in a season. he AVERAGED that many wins in 12 seasons. prior to his arrival, the gators NEVER won a s.e.c. championship. under him, they won 6. yes, his defenses were pretty darn good as well, but anybody who knows college football knows that sos revolutionized not only SEC offenses but those in all of college football.

although last year ended on a high note for the gamecocks, with wins at rival clemson and in the bowl game against univ. of houston, the whole season must be considered only slightly above average b/c of a 3-5 record in the mighty s-e-c. the gamecocks beat EVERY team they were supposed to beat and lost to EVERY team they were supposed to lose to. yes, 4 of those 5 losses were by a touchdown or less, and yes, we did outplay and really should have beaten the national champion florida gators in gainesville (3 blocked kicks will do that to you), and yes, all 5 losses were to teams with GREAT talent (florida, arkansas, georgia, tennessee, and auburn). but you have to win some of those games to have a good year in the eastern division of the s.e.c. b/c the schedule only gets harder this year. with games at lsu, at georgia, at tennessee, and at arkansas, and with florida and clemson coming to columbia this year, and add in a "tricky" game in chapel hill against new coach butch davis and the unc tarheels, many experts are (accurately) ranking our schedule as the toughest or second toughest in college football for 2007.

the good news: there is a lot. we have the #1 rated recruiting class of wide receivers coming in, and a well-rounded class in general, with position needs filled across the board. there are so many good wide receivers, in fact, that a few good ones will have to redshirt, but look for jason barnes, chris culliver, mark barnes, and joseph hills to contribute this year. we have 2 very good-to-great running backs in mike davis and cory boyd (boyd being the possibly "great" back) behind a young but very talented offensive line. the defense should be improved, especially along the defensive line and with linebacker twins "the brinkley boys." teams will not often be scoring more than 4 touchdowns against us this year. when you combine that with a 5th year starting quarterback in blake mitchell, and the ball coach calling the plays, history would predict a very good season for the 'cocks.

if i were a betting man, i would say that the gamecocks will go 9-3, with losses to lsu, tennessee, and arkansas. that would mean that the gamecocks would beat georgia, florida, clemson, and unc. that would be a fine, fine season by gamecock standards, and if that happens as i predict, that will be the best 9-3 team in the country. here's to you, steve spurrier, for bringing hope to the gamecock nation that this program can finally consistently win. i'm not guaranteeing continual success, but it certainly seems within the realm of possibility, especially if steve stays for another five years and keeps on recruiting like he did this past season.