'Canes Fall Flat to Badgers
At least we don't live in Wisconsin.
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This was not Good Jacory. At all.
At 8:05 on Tuesday night Miami had everything going for them: wobbling at the top in Gainesville, a bungled transition in Tallahassee, and the chance to make a statement and start 2010 as a top 10 team.
By 8:10 they probably wanted a time machine.
The final score in the Champs Sports Bowl, 20-14 Wisconsin, could have been a lot worse -- but that says more about the Badgers' continued inability to go for the jugular than it does about Miami's defense. And the offense that was the strength of the team all season -- the one with so many weapons, from Travis Benjamin to Leonard Hankerson to Damien Berry to Graig Cooper -- had only five good minutes. The 55 in between were a case study in ineptitute.
Sam Shields took a reverse on the opening kickoff 86 yards for a touchdown that was moved back on an illegal block. Graig Cooper ran it in for a score on the very next play, and then everything went to pot: Javarris James would gain all of five yards in the half, a limping Jacory Harris' head was somewhere floating 10 yards away from everything on the field, like his passes, and the offensive line...wait, was there an offensive line?
Miami would stage a mini-comeback attempt in the final minutes, with Thearon Collier catching a touchdown pass with 1:22 left followed by Matt Bosher recovering his own onside kick. But then Harris threw his billionth incompletion (note: accurate in spirit, if not in statistics) and that was that for Miami.
The defense fared only marginally better. Speedy Badger John Clay scooted 122 yards for two touchdowns, and Miami demonstrated a mystifying inability to adjust when 13 of quarterback Scott Tolzien's 19 completions went to tight ends Lance Kendricks and Garrett Graham.
On the whole it was utterly unimpressive in every facet of the game. To make matters worse, junior Graig Cooper finds his draftability in question after suffering what appeared to be a serious knee injury right before the half. He never returned to the game.
Miami has now lost back-to-back bowl games and they'll have to make next season's top tier the hard way. Still, it's best no to lose the forest for the giant tree the team just doused with lighter fluid and shot with a flamethrower: who wouldn't have killed for a 9-4 record at the start of the season?
At least there's no longer any question about what to work on in the offseason: all of it.
Posted Wednesday, Dec 30, 2009 - 1:21 AM EST
