On the Rocks: A Scandurro Story

BY TIM SCANDURRO

"On the Rocks"

Tulane coach Jon Sumrall’s celebratory drink of choice is bourbon.  He has talked often about his post-victory routine of sipping on that classic American libation, a brief period of hard-won contentment before moving on to the next challenge.

I don’t know what his drink of choice is after a performance like Saturday’s against Ole Miss, but I’d probably hide the antifreeze in his garage just to be safe. Maybe Ole Miss is vastly improved, and maybe they have a real find in their D-3 quarterback transfer.  I believe in the latter more than I do in the former, but we’ll find out a lot in five days.

This result felt like it was more about us.  We were never in this football game from the opening snap. How bad was it?  Our radio commentator named the punter his Player of the Game. Heck, as much as we’ve complained about having to play four straight games with the opposing conference’s officials, we needed 30 yards of penalties from that SEC crew Saturday just to get the one touchdown we got. 

           When Coach talks about fast guys, he often says they “can RUN, run.”  Well this game was BAD, bad.   You can say we were out-athleted, and we were.  You can say they were faster and stronger, and they were.  But we knew all that going in.  What we didn’t know was that our team would look as poorly as it did from an intensity,  pride and execution standpoint. Especially in contrast to Memphis, who went toe to toe with Arkansas on Saturday and found a way to win. 

We held out Derrick Graham and Maurice Turner Saturday, two of our best players.  Could they have played if this was a pivotal game we had to have?  I think so, but I don’t know.  I do know that our coaches felt that we were beaten up pretty good after the first three games.    We altered the practice routine to cut the workload down last week to try and keep the players physically fresh.   The lighter workload seemed to show up Saturday, but the fresher players did not.  We looked “tired and slow,” Coach said afterwards….but he also told FTW subscribers days before the game that he was concerned about the health of his squad heading into its most physical game.  We have a handful of guys playing hurt, and it showed.  We also pulled a number of our starters Saturday early in the fourth quarter, a couple of drives before Ole Miss did. 

So it appears that this team will welcome its upcoming bye week, physically and mentally.  But before that gets here, a suddenly tricky date at Tulsa must be navigated next week.

In trying to put this one into context I recalled that this past summer a lot of people, including people on the coaching staff, said Tulane just needed to find a way to 3-1 after the first four challenging games, and everything would be in front of us.  3-1 would mean by definition that we would have at least two “P-4” wins and that would likely trump any other competitor for the G-6 Playoff spot.

And that's where we are this morning.  And because that’s where we knew we would be this morning before kickoff Saturday in Oxford no matter what happened, you’ll never convince me that mindset didn’t play a role in what happened Saturday.  If the old saying is true that 90% of life is just showing up, we were in the other 10% Saturday.  That’s why I’m not panicking over the quarterback play or the receivers or the play-calling or the talent in general.  All  were lauded in the Duke game.  But that game is gone, and so is Saturday’s.  All that matters now is Tulsa, and what we do each game from here on out.  What we CAN carry forward from the last two weeks is who we are when we are locked in and focused, and what happens when we’re not.

In the last 90 seconds or so of the game after we emptied the bench, redshirt freshman Geordan Guidry pursued an Ole Miss ballcarrier and made a physical tackle that knocked the ball loose.  After we returned the favor with an interception, another redshirt freshman, safety Carson Klein, was inserted into the game.  All he did was make the last two tackles of the game, the first one a textbook technique stop that earned him immediate praise from several of his teammates.

Those seldom-used guys reminded us that every play matters, just like every game matters.  The core values (“A.T.D.L,” and you all know what those stand for by now) are supposed to be there in good times and in bad times, after wins and after losses, in every practice and in every game regardless of score or situation.

Making sure they are is the job of every coach and every player in our program this week.  There are no more ‘get out of jail free’ cards in the deck.  We are now almost certainly in a single elimination tournament from here on out, starting Saturday in Oklahoma. 

Your correspondent will be in Montana next Saturday, so we’ll have to see about next week’s column.  I’ll be fly-fishing with several old friends at the invitation of a classmate who recently retired.  He has no more business to take care of, but because he worked hard his whole life he now has an exciting opportunity to go where he wants to go.

So does our football team.  It’s all still in front of us.  Eyes forward.