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Sunday, December 5, 2010

UCF's O'Leary: 'We know what we're in for'

Georgia officially accepted the invitation to the Liberty Bowl on a Sunday evening teleconference. Head coach Mark Richt was then joined on the call by his once and future counterpart, George O’Leary, the head coach of Central Florida.

“Mark, how are you doing?” O’Leary said after a Liberty Bowl invited the coaches to “exchange pleasantries.”

Richt congratulated O’Leary on winning the Conference USA championship on Saturday, which secured UCF’s berth in the game.

“I’ve always enjoyed Georgia and the way it’s played,” O’Leary said. “We know what we’re in for.”

“There’s no secrets, and it oughta be a good one,” Richt answered.

A few more notes from the call:

- Georgia’s schedule, as outlined by Richt, was as follow: A practice on Saturday, then off until after final exams the following week. They’ll practice until 21st, then let the players go home, then report back on the 26th, and presumably head off to Memphis.

- Richt said the emphasis during the 15 allotted practices would be on preparing to win, and not looking toward 2011.

“The focus is on winning this game,” Richt said. “I know there are other coaches that look at this as a spring ball, or as a chance to get ready for spring ball.”

One of them is his defensive coordinator Todd Grantham, who said after the win over Georgia Tech that he wanted to use some of the time to get a look at younger players. So we'll see how all that turns out.

- Richt is 1-0 against O’Leary, having defeated him in his first year at Georgia, which ended a three-game winning streak for the Yellow Jackets against the Bulldogs.

“Hard-nosed football coach,” Richt said. “Every team he’s ever put out there can play a physical brand of ball.”

O’Leary returned the compliment, saying “They don’t know how good they have it there right now with Mark Richt.”

- Richt has done a bit of informal scouting of UCF: He Tivoed the Conference USA championship game on Saturday and said he was about three—fourths of the way through it.

What stood out to him was freshman quarterback Jeffery Godfrey, a dual-threat who is second on the team in rushing.

“Their young quarterback is really a dynamic guy that can throw and run, and creates a lot of problems for you,” Richt said.

- The two head coaches will travel to Memphis on Thursday for another press conference to promote the game there.

The game is played at Liberty Bowl Memorial Coliseum, which has a listed capacity of 62,380. (Central Florida was just there a week ago, beating Memphis in its regular-season finale.)

10 comments:

CSA said...

Another dual-threat quarterback, awesome. Let's see what Grantham can do with a few weeks of preparation. In any case, it should be an interesting game. It's been a pretty poor season, but at least we've made some changes and have one more game to look forward to. Thanks Seth.

Willb said...

I was just looking over the leading passers in all of college football. Out of the top 31 passers as far as yards go only three players have a higher efficiency rating than Aaron Murray! Kellen Moore, Andrew Luck, and Ryan Mallett. It could be more than 31 but the page I was looking at only showed 31 qb's.

I cannot believe there is not even an argument as far as who the SEC Freshman of the year is! Everyone seems to be giving it to Lattimore.

This was a strange year offensively for the SEC. Normally Murrays numbers would rank higher than they did this year. If you were just going by numbers one could argue that Aaron Murray just had the greatest statistical season ever for a Ga QB!

Is there a reason everyone just wants to hand this award to Lattimore? He has had a great season but Murray has had a far better one in my opinion.

Does anyone else agree with me on this?

Willb said...

Check this out. It surprised me!

Not counting this year, since 03 which is as far back as I looked only Tim Tebow in 07-09, Jamarcus Russell in 06, and Jason Campell in 04 have had a higher passer efficiency in the SEC than Aaron Murray is having this season! It could date back even farther. The stats i was looking at only dated back to 03.

Those are three first round NFL QB's in there best seasons! Aaron Murrays numbers this season look very similar to the passing numbers Tebow put up in his Senior season last year in which he led the SEC in passing efficiency.

Richmond_dawg said...

@WillB,

I agree with you that based purely on statistics, Murray has had an arguably better season than Lattimore. Unfortunately, voters aren't going to look at just statistics.

Lattimore was THE reason that USC won the SEC East and made it to the SEC championship game. They went 7-6 last year, and Lattimore is the main reason they have a chance at 10 wins this year. He had an incredible season.

Statistically it is a close call, but once you consider the improvement Lattimore added to his team, it is understandable that he is most likely going to win the award.

ChrisDawg said...

Well if your going to look at wins then why shouldn't Michael Dyer get it? I mean he is averaging more ypc than Lattimore, he could go over 1000 yards and his team is undefeated. Maybe Lattimore is more valuable to his team than Dyer is to his team but Lattimore has a better defense than either Murray or Dyer.

I think if Murray had a defense as good as Sc he would of won 10 games and be a lock for freshman of the year.

If the award is simply who is the best freshman in the SEC then Murray should get it. If the award goes to who is the best freshman on the best team than Dyer should get it.

I think Murray is having an incredibly underrated season! If you look back through the years only Tebow Mcelroy Mallett Newton Russell and Campell have had a more efficient season in the SEC in the last ten or so years. Also none of those players had a freshman season that compares to Murrays.

Anonymous said...

at this point I could care less about any of that... the issue at hand is that we all know that bobo is not the best oc for our boys and yet he is kept on the team,... time for our coaches to go

Anonymous said...

@anon 11:44

I think you mean you could "not" care less... because if you could care less then your statement doesn't make any sense. Granted it doesn't make any sense anyway because you say "the issue at hand" which really isn't the issue at hand at all since neither the blog post nor any of the preceding comments are referencing the offensive coaching staff.

Anonymous said...

I also hate it when people say "i could care less". Make fun of me all you want, but if people are going to speak they shouldn't sound like idiots doing it.

ChrisDawg said...

Yahoo has listed our bowl as the 14th best bowl. That's pretty good if you consider how many bowls there are. They say that UCF is trying to get a bid from the Big East so a win for them over Ga would be big.

Also all the SEC bowls look really good. We have some pretty tough match ups. If we go near undefeated in this bowl season than we are by far and away the best conference. We are anyways I think. I'm looking forward to Ark vs. Ohio St, and Miss St vs. Michigan.

ChrisDawg said...

Seth why are we back to this Blog approval thing? I haven't seen any bad post lately. Just people voicing there opinions. Maybe there's something I missed? You don't want it come across as your screening the post before they go up just because people disagree with you. Not that I'm saying that's why you did it. Maybe you have a real reason.

Will this post ever be seen?