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UCF opens as 21 point fav over UCONN

Stormthecourt?

Golden Knight
Jan 19, 2012
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Supposedly someone opened it at 16.5 but the first I’m seeing it at most places is UCF -21. Fair?
 
One thing I’ve read about JH is he loves running up the score. No more O’Leary ball

O'Leary holding back the team to score just enough to win is something I consider a contributing cause to our winless season. We graduated a lot of players that year and that left few players with any meaningful playing time. I suspect this is also why the team kept alternating between good seasons and bad seasons during O'Leary's tenure.

Winning by large margins may seem unsportsmanlike, especially to the losing coach, but it's actually important to build a large enough lead to give the 2nd and 3rd string players valuable playing time.
 
O'Leary holding back the team to score just enough to win is something I consider a contributing cause to our winless season. We graduated a lot of players that year and that left few players with any meaningful playing time. I suspect this is also why the team kept alternating between good seasons and bad seasons during O'Leary's tenure.

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I really find it interesting how people make stuff up like this and put it forth as fact. I assume this is trolling.
 
2005 8-5
2006 4-8
2007 10-4
2008 4-8
2009 8-5
2010 11-3
2011 5-7
2012 10-4

Ok, there's the record, what part of it is "made up"?

The part where we would "hold the team back" BS. Complete nonsense. And our winless season was about many factors from coaching, to injuries, to lack of player leadership.
 
The part where we would "hold the team back" BS. Complete nonsense. And our winless season was about many factors from coaching, to injuries, to lack of player leadership.
One example of holding the team back was the play calling against FIU in 2015 where we went backwards on predictable non-attacking plays at the end of the game. GOL was asked about it and he said “I know our kicker can make it from 45 so we don’t need to go any further”
 
The part where we would "hold the team back" BS. Complete nonsense. And our winless season was about many factors from coaching, to injuries, to lack of player leadership.

So years of having a reputation for playing down to the competition, was just a misunderstanding? How many games did we lose in the last few minutes because G.O. just wanted to keep it on the ground and run out the clock. How many games did we win, especially in his last few years here, in a heart stopping comeback because only when we had our backs to the wall, was the offense cranked up to where it should have been the whole game - we didn't earn the nickname "Heart Attack Knights" by accident.

Yes, the 2015 season had a multiple of issues. But do you really think that injuries and weak player leadership had nothing to do with inexperience? When you have all of your starters on the field the whole game, almost every game, that's a problem. You get what we observed from 2005 - 2012 where 7 out 8 seasons saw reversals of progress. That's why I'm so pleased with the way the new coaching staff ran the team, and now hopefully Heupel as well. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all that O'leary did for the Knights. He built the foundations that without we wouldn't have a prayer of advancing to where we should be. He just wasn't the one to take us to that next level.
 
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Not a fb coach but I also hold the belief that GOL was too conservative at times. Also believe SF was too aggressive on a few 4th downs in 2017. A good coach can still error either way. I think SF did a good job of balancing aggressiveness with our capabilities.

If we played conservative in the AAC last year we wouldn't get as much recognition as we did. It's all about that balance.
 
So years of having a reputation for playing down to the competition, was just a misunderstanding? How many games did we lose in the last few minutes because G.O. just wanted to keep it on the ground and run out the clock. How many games did we win, especially in his last few years here, in a heart stopping comeback because only when we had our backs to the wall, was the offense cranked up to where it should have been the whole game - we didn't earn the nickname "Heart Attack Knights" by accident.

Yes, the 2015 season had a multiple issues. But you really don't think injuries and weak player leadership had anything to do with inexperience? When you have all of your starters on the field the whole game, almost every game, that's a problem. You get what we observed from 2005 - 2012 where 7 out 8 seasons saw reversals of progress. That's why I'm so pleased with the way the new coaching staff ran the team, and now hopefully Heupel as well. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate all that O'leary did for the Knights. He built the foundations that without we wouldn't have a prayer of advancing to where we should be. He just wasn't the one to take us to that next level.
GOL = not a very good coach. Think of what could have been with a scott frost at the helm
 
So years of having a reputation for playing down to the competition, was just a misunderstanding? How many games did we lose in the last few minutes because G.O. just wanted to keep it on the ground and run out the clock. How many games did we win, especially in his last few years here, in a heart stopping comeback because only when we had our backs to the wall, was the offense cranked up to where it should have been the whole game - we didn't earn the nickname "Heart Attack Knights" by accident.

l.

These are completely different from holding a team back from scoring. There is no proof of that. The GOL philosophy was a pro style run heavy smash mouth offense. It is strategy. That is not holding a team back from scoring.
 
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2010 UCF 17 SMU 7 Championship Game. GOL wouldn't let the offense run anything risky after 6:25 into the 3rd quarter with Murray running in what would be our final score. Everybody in the stands was shaking their heads at GOL and his calls for over 1.5 quarters.
 
2010 UCF 17 SMU 7 Championship Game. GOL wouldn't let the offense run anything risky after 6:25 into the 3rd quarter with Murray running in what would be our final score. Everybody in the stands was shaking their heads at GOL and his calls for over 1.5 quarters.

Did you following UCF Football in 2010? If ya did...then you would have known that UCF's passing offense was 2nd to last in the conf...while SMU had the #1 RB in CUSA and had the 3rd highest passing offense.

SMU averaged 29 pts in conf games that year but UCF D held them to just 7 pts in the Championship Game (only time SMU didn't score in double digits all year).

UCF ran the ball 44 times in that game to control the clock, control field position and to keep UCF's #1 CUSA scoring defense fresh while keeping SMU's strong offense on the bench.

UCF was #1 in CUSA that season in time of possession...and it worked.

It worked...UCF won their 2nd ever conf title and then went on to win their first ever bowl game in Memphis weeks later.

Only a loser would complain about how that game turned out.
 
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Did you following UCF Football in 2010? If ya did...then you would have known that UCF's passing offense was 2nd to last in the conf...while SMU had the #1 RB in CUSA and had the 3rd highest passing offense.

SMU averaged 29 pts in conf games that year but UCF D held them to just 7 pts in the Championship Game (only time SMU didn't score in double digits all year).

UCF ran the ball 44 times in that game to control the clock, control field position and to keep UCF's #1 CUSA scoring defense fresh while keeping SMU's strong offense on the bench.

UCF was #1 in CUSA that season in time of possession...and it worked.

It worked...UCF won their 2nd ever conf title and then went on to win their first ever bowl game in Memphis weeks later.

Only a loser would complain about how that game turned out.
Only a loser would think this is rocket science
 
I guess Knight Light the whole stadium was full of losers that day except for you. 3 runs into the middle of the line isn't called having a good offense. GOL was lucky more than anything else. I watched many games where 3 runs into the middle of the line cost us the game. That's part of the reason why he had many below .500 seasons...I'm surprised he let the football players have face masks BUT he was not allowed to take that away as he removed the names off the shirts :)
 
maybe better than GOL? We had a grumpy old man with an outdated attitude
Lets see.. GOL took a team with no discipline and no real history playing in CUSA and turned it into:.Conf Champs 4x; Division Chaps 4x, top 25 finish 2x, top 10 finish 1x; BCS bowl victory; Skip Holtz took a team playing in the Big East with some recent success and won.....well....nothing. There is no closer comparison. So take the good with the bad and understand that it is quite possible that UCF may have overachieved under GOL. No one will ever know
 
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Lets see.. GOL took a team with no discipline and no real history playing in CUSA and turned it into:.Conf Champs 4x; Division Chaps 4x, top 25 finish 2x, top 10 finish 1x; BCS bowl victory; Skip Holtz took a team playing in the Big East with some recent success and won.....well....nothing. There is no closer comparison. So take the good with the bad and understand that it is quite possible that UCF may have overachieved under GOL. No one will ever know

GOL did well with what we had. UCF was a decent team in a very mediocre conference. Our coach was not big on disciplining players who broke the rules and we had an average graduation success rate. Under GOL, he changed the team mentality and his first 0-12 season he stuck to his guns and created a team successful on and off the field. We had less player scandals, better GPAs, more players graduating, and all around a better core player group. I think if GOL didn’t try to be our AD, he would have done a better job as coach and could have continued to coach here. Even going 0-12, he was still winning +50% of his games. GOL was overall a successful head coach for our program and gave us a solid foundation to build upon.
 
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It’s Regular season wins only so conf champ game and bowl games don’t count. Don’t see UCF losing 4 games, just too much talent on offense. Possibly a loss at UNC and maybe one road conference game is the worst I see UCF doing
I don’t know, they were 3-9 last year and not predicted to be much better. The 2017 Maryland team was probably better than UNC now.

The UNC QB situation is a mess. However after games against Cal and ECU we should know a lot more. I say Pitt at home and Memphis away are our toughest games. Maybe Navy at home or the CCG if we go to it which I fully expect to.
 
I don’t know, they were 3-9 last year and not predicted to be much better. The 2017 Maryland team was probably better than UNC now.

The UNC QB situation is a mess. However after games against Cal and ECU we should know a lot more. I say Pitt at home and Memphis away are our toughest games. Maybe Navy at home or the CCG if we go to it which I fully expect to.
UNC was awful last year no doubt, played a different QB like every drive lol. I definitely expect them to have a set QB this season and Fedora gets a lot of talent. Going on the road is never easy especially for a home opener. Our offense should carve up their defense which was god awful last season
 
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I don’t know, they were 3-9 last year and not predicted to be much better. The 2017 Maryland team was probably better than UNC now.

The UNC QB situation is a mess. However after games against Cal and ECU we should know a lot more. I say Pitt at home and Memphis away are our toughest games. Maybe Navy at home or the CCG if we go to it which I fully expect to.
Don't sleep on Navy at home whatever we do. Navy at home and Memphis on the road will probably be our biggest in conference challenges.
 
Don't sleep on Navy at home whatever we do. Navy at home and Memphis on the road will probably be our biggest in conference challenges.
Memphis on the road will be a tough one. Wish we played them earlier as they should have figured out their QB situation by then. I just decided to attend to that game. Roadtrips really suck when your team loses. Haven’t had to experience that for awhile fortunately.

Navy rarely gets blown out home or even away. It should be a game. We can learn a lot from last year’s game.
 
Heupel SHOULD run the score up in EVERY game.

Then after they question him on it, he can blame it on the invitational committee that said that last year's team wasn't impressive enough.
Agree this is the only way we could have improved last years chance but its risky if we're trying to build experience in our depth
 
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