An update to Baylor's quarterback situation
Baylor will be without one of its quarterbacks, SEC play begins in basketball and some other Dave Aranda press conference nuggets.
I hope everyone had a terrific Christmas. We’ve got a new podcast out with former Andy Kennedy staffer Bracken Ray checking in on a struggling Ole Miss basketball team that opens SEC play at home against Florida on Wednesday. LBs Greg, Skybox and I followed that up with our post-Christmas bowl picks (including some since-cancelled games, sorry. Enjoy the free content) after a blazing start to the pre-Christmas games for all three of us. Check that out here or anywhere you get podcasts.
We’ve got some of the same to discuss, plus the beginning of Sugar Bowl week.
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Aranda holds Sugar Bowl presser
Baylor head coach Dave Aranda spoke to the media on Monday in his Sugar Bowl introductory press conference. There was one major note to take away from it and a couple of other, smaller things I found interesting.
Baylor’s backup quarterback Blake Shapen had shoulder surgery at some point in the last three weeks and will not be available for this game. Why is a backup quarterback’s availability important? Well, with the ongoing Covid mess (that’s completely self-inflicted by outdated protocols), having one less body at quarterback available is certainly noteworthy. Beyond that, Shapen is a huge reason Baylor is in this game. He started in place of Gerry Bohanon in the Bears’ dramatic win over Oklahoma State in the Big 12 Championship game.
Bohanon missed the regular season finale against Texas Tech and the Big 12 title game with a hamstring injury. Shapen played well in Bohanon’s absence. He went 43-62 with five touchdowns and no interceptions in the two games. To me, the most impressive part of what Shapen was his composure in the Big 12 Championship game. Oklahoma State boasts a nasty, SEC-caliber front seven on defense. The Cowboys led the Big 12 in sacks with 55. The next closest was actually Baylor with 34. It wasn’t the prettiest performance in the world. But Baylor is a team who made its hay running the football on the edges for most of the season and struggled to do that in the regular season matchup (a 24-14 loss to Oklahoma State), so they decided to come out throwing the football. Shapen was up to the challenge. Baylor scored all 21 of its points in the first 24 minutes of the game and held on for dear life. Shapen displayed a composure in the moment that I thought was admirable.
Aside from that, there wasn’t a ton of news nuggets from Aranda’s press conference. I didn’t really expect it to be chock full of them. Aside from the Covid questions, someone asked Aranda how different life is for him since the last time he coached in the Superdome. If you’ll remember, Aranda was LSU’s defensive coordinator when it won the National Championship in 2019 — a 42-25 win over the Clemson Tigers in New Orleans. Here was his answer.
“A lot has changed. Yeah, I think probably the last time I was in that stadium, I think life was probably simpler. I think it was probably -- I think I could probably control as much as I could control at that point with the focus being on football. And now with less football and more people, I've grown immeasurably and am still aiming to grow. I think in that time, going back, probably the faults that I would see in other people, I probably kept it there. I think now I see the faults really in me in terms of what other people bring up. And so I think there's a fair amount like that. And I'm thankful for everybody here. And, in the position that I'm in and the people that I'm around, for trying to get me better.”
#Baylor players leaped on Dave Aranda as he came off the field. “I KNOW YOU DONT LIKE ATTENTION,” they screamed at him.As someone who was once paid to be somewhat skeptical at all times, I try to not get overly impressed by football coaches because they sound halfway articulate in front of a microphone. In one sense, these dudes are sort of just highly paid gym teachers. That’s obviously a sweeping generality and there are plenty of incredibly intelligent, good men coaching college football, but the point is that I find myself admiring Dave Aranda more every time I hear him speak. He’s sort of freakishly calm, to the point that his players asked him to chew the team out when things were going poorly amidst a terrible 2-7 2020 season in his first year at the helm in Waco.
One of my favorite moments from postgame was watching Dave Aranda quietly take it all in as the confetti fell.In an industry littered with jocks, rampant insecurity and paranoia, Aranda is a quiet, thoughtful human being. He seems to give answers to questions that are genuine and thought-provoking. Football coaches often hate reflecting on things. They work in a brutal, bottom-line industry that constantly wonders ‘what have you done for me lately?’ Maybe that’s what struck me about Aranda’s answer here — that he took a moment to reflect. I bet life has changed a hell of a lot for him since the last time he was in this building. Hell, life has changed a lot for him in the last 365 days, from going 2-7 in a Covid-ravaged season to winning the Big 12. Who knows how his tenure at Baylor turns out. This sport is so fickle when it comes to success coming and going. But Aranda seems to be a smart guy who cares about the people around him, and that’s not always the case in college football.
Aranda was asked about watching Matt Corral on tape and preparing for him: “I think, for Matt Corral, I think he's a guy that -- surely he's the engine for them. I see everything kind of going through him. He has a great awareness and patience in the pocket and can find guys that are clearly open, can thread the needle on one-on-one shots on the outside. When the rush is divided and conquered, can get out and scramble and make plays happen, which, for us, the majority of the year has been a struggle. But on top of all of those things, the thing you see about him is that he's a winner, and he does not take to failure and he does not take to not succeed. And so you can see that fight in him, and that bleeds through to his team. And so what a battle we've got ahead of us.”
He was asked about Ole Miss’s defense and its bend but don’t break philosophy. As Aranda outlines below, I do think this a fascinating aspect of this game. Baylor has moved the ball well up until the red zone, but has been a little bit vulnerable in terms of kicking field goals in the red zone. That would seem to play into the Rebels’ strength as a defense. And so I think knowing that that's coming, the work and the prep that it takes to be at our best under that type of circumstance and pressure, I think is really kind of everything on that side of it, on defense. And then I think for our offense, if I'm Ole Miss, I'm looking at us and just how we've been able to move the ball from 20 to 20 pretty strong these last couple games but have not been as successful in finishing those drives to touchdowns.
“I think, just looking at it from Ole Miss's perspective, if I'm them and I'm looking at -- I think we can go even further. If I'm them looking at our defense, I'm seeing these big D linemen that we got and knock back and defend the run and all of it. I'm sure on their side of it, they're saying, "Well, that's great. How does that look after eight plays under a minute of going left and right, left and right, left and right?"
And so I'm looking at -- if I'm Ole Miss, I'm looking at us and how that's a strength and how they can double down on all of it. So I just think, for us, the ability to spend time there, to spend time executing drives to where we don't create penalties and we're not battling two people to get down there. And then once we are there, to use their advantages against them and make it a disadvantage for them or an advantage for us, either by play selection or by angles or by new wrinkles, I think are just way key. And so a huge part of the game, in my opinion, is finishing out drives.”
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So what about Gerry Bohanon?
What is Ole Miss preparing to face in Bohanon? He’s an interesting story. Bohanon is from a tiny town in Arkansas called Earle just outside of Memphis. He ran the football a ton in high school and never really got to display the arm strength he’s shown at Baylor.
Bohanon is mobile, particularly in the red zone. He’s got 70 carries on the year but has nine touchdowns. He adds another dimension to an already strong running game down near the goal line. He doesn’t throw many interceptions and is incredibly confident and competent when his first read is available. When he’s forced to go beyond the initial look of a play, that is when he has been less accurate and more susceptible to making a mistake. With nearly six weeks off since injuring the hamstring, I imagine Bohanon will basically be at full strength for this game.
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Ole Miss Basketball opens SEC play with Florida
Ole Miss finished its non-conference season in sour fashion with a home loss to a Samford team with a NET rating in the 200s. The Rebels enter SEC play with a ton of work to do to get back into any sort of postseason picture. Honestly, it feels silly to keep talking about this team in the context of making the NCAA Tournament or even the NIT. They haven’t looked like a good basketball team at any point this year, outside of a handful of brief stretches in a couple of games. But that was the expectation going into this season for a program that’s missed the Big Dance each of the last two years, so I feel like it’s still relevant to grade them on such a scale until this thing completely crumbles and they fall out of any sort of reasonable postseason discussion for good.
The Rebels open SEC play on Wednesday against Florida. It’s a 4 p.m. tip in the Pavilion. Florida, in a very general sense is similar to Ole Miss. The Gators a bottom-half team in the league in scoring but a top-3 defensive club. They’ve got wins over Ohio State and a pedestrian Florida State team, a road loss at Oklahoma and a head-scratching home loss to Texas Southern. The Gators’ leading scorer is 6-foot-11 forward Colin Castleton. He’s a guy that’s likely going to give Ole Miss issues on the interior, particularly on the offensive glass. He’s second in the SEC in offensive rebounds. Tyree Appleby is a decent point guard, but it seems like a lot of the Gators struggles on offense have come from a lack of consistent scoring from the guards. Does that sound familiar?
I am sure many of you are just dying for an in-depth breakdown of this matchup (I kid). But I am more interested when this proverbial dam might break for the Rebels. Their first eight SEC games are brutal. A road trip to Tennessee is up next after this game, followed by a home game with Mississippi State and a road game at Texas A&M, home games versus Auburn and Missouri and a return trip at MSU. Things are about to get very real for a basketball team that struggles to score and rebound. The SEC has eight teams that both of those things very well. Six of the 35 top-ranked teams nationally in scoring are SEC teams. Ole Miss is going to be the inferior team in terms of talent more nights than not. How will it make up for that? Defense travels, and Ole Miss has defended well all year long. But if it doesn’t find a way to generate offense and better shot-creation, along with rebounding the ball better, this is going to be a long winter for this team. How that affects the trajectory of the program and its leadership will be fascinating to watch unfold.
Jordan Watkins transfers to Ole Miss
This happened last week, but I never got to it. Ole Miss landed Louisville transfer wide receiver Jordan Watkins. He had 35 catches for 529 yards and four touchdowns as a freshman. The Rebels now have Watkins and Mizzou transfer Jalen Knox — who transferred this past summer and sat out this year — as a pair of potential impact guys at receiver next year via the portal.
I don’t know a ton about Watkins and I am not going to pretend like I do. I do not think is the last transfer wide receiver the Rebels land.
On the horizon
Sugar Bowl preview pod with Weldon Rotenberg
Baylor preview newsletter later this week
Dispatches from New Orleans
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