From the Bench

Missed Chances Cost Hogs All Season

Robert Shields

Paper covers rock and obviously glammed-up glittery new gold helmets beats WAC red unis. The Razorbacks donned the all-red pearly uniforms for the fifth time Saturday night and were riding a four-game winning streak wearing them, but they’re not lucky anymore so it’s time to ditch them. Plus, the Hog might end up playing the Houston Cougars in a bowl game and it’s going to get confusing.

The Hogs made three colossal mistakes against LSU, and all of them cost the Hogs the game. In order, Ryan Mallett’s badly overthrown pass that resulted in an interception on the Hogs’ opening drive as they were nearing scoring position. The second mistake was allowing Trindon Holliday to return a punt for a touchdown. The third was Alex Tejada missing a field goal in overtime for the loss.

Tejada will catch a lot of flack as he has done this before in other games. You cannot blame the kid. You blame those that put him in that position. He has a history of missing pressure kicks, especially from the angle of the right hash mark, so don’t expect him to make one when you put him in that position.

Without Tejada’s earlier efforts in the game when he hit three field goals and three extra points, the Hogs would not have even made overtime. He had 12 of the Hogs’ 30 points -- not a bad effort. The offense can share a little of the blame. Getting near the red zone so many times and settling for field goals was fatal.

Still, the breaker in the game was the punt return. Typically, it is difficult for any team to win on the road in the SEC when it has that big a bust in the kicking game. A field goal or punt return against you on the road is worth a lot more than just seven points.

Back to overtime, surely it had to cross Bobby Petrino’s mind when he was 3 yards short to go for it on fourth down and play for the win and not leave it in the hands (or foot) of his kicker. He played the odds as any coach in the SEC would do. More often than not on the road that can cost you and it did.

The Hogs finished one game worse than my preseason prediction of 8-4. The bust in my predictions was the loss at Ole Miss. I predicted Nutt would miss a field goal for the Hogs to win. In the exact opposite, the Hogs missed a field goal at LSU to pick up the extra game for me to have gotten back to the 8-4 mark.

A 7-5 season is definite improvement over the 5-7 season last year, especially considering the extremely difficult schedule and road games. The 3-5 mark in SEC is not great, which is where the victory Saturday night would have made a big difference in finishing 4-4 in conference play and tied for third.

Now on to bowl season, and hopefully the Hogs will win their bowl to end the season on a high mark.



OTHER SEC NOTES
If you have watched much football over the last few months, it’s not hard to recognize the SEC really does play at a different level. The brutal hit on Joe Adams in the end zone is actually very typical in the SEC. In other conferences such as the Big Ten, you still see teams sending a jumping running back over the goal line. You never see that in the SEC because it’s a great way to get someone killed or paralyzed.

In other news from Saturday, two middle-of-the-pack teams in the SEC beat the two teams that are going to play in the ACC championship game.



HAWGBALL NOT
Why does the Razorback basketball team at a timeout go out onto the floor with new chairs put out for them? This has to be a joke as there is no one at Bud Walton behind the bench to hear them or bother them. I understand like at Durham or Chapel Hill removing yourself from the sideline, but the Hogs need to get over themselves. This is not Hawgball, and the crowd is a testament to the fact. If things continue like they have been, they are going to move the basketball team back to Barnhill so that the more successful women’s volleyball and gymnastics teams can compete in a larger venue.


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