First of all congrats to our friends at Bring On The Cats. Their boys took it to us and got it done infront fan inspired home crowd. It was a lot of fun going back and forth with them all week. I sure hope regular BN community members will show the same kind of class we got from guys over at Rocky Top Talk, after their two back to back heartbreaking losses against us in last two years. They are good people over there and they have a team that will most likely be in contention to go into the Big-12 championship game like they were till the last day of regular season. Good luck to them.
Speaking of the loss, DCBruins' post game thread post has filled up. I went ahead and rebumped a post from couple of weeks ago pointing out how we have a huge season opener coming up at the Rose Bowl next Saturday. While there are many who looks ready to quit and move on (and good riddance to them), would like to hear from those who are showing up at the Rose Bowl next weekend in that thread.
I am not going to engage in lot micro analysis at this point of the night. There will be time for that sometime tomorrow and beyond. In the meantime I will excerpt a passage from today's gameday roundup post:
I am not feeling all that great about how today is going to go. We know if Bruins lose today it's not going to be the end of the world. However, what I am not all that excited about is the gnashing and waling that will ensue on message boards, intensified and toxic cynicism from the local tradmed that will surround the team, even if the Bruins give a great effort today.
Guess I didn't realize that lot of toxicity would also come in our comment threads from drive by posters, trolls, who were mostly absent during the long off-season when we had repeated, drawn out discussions on what should be the expectations heading into Rick Neuheisel's third season into Westwood. Instead we are seeing analysis from so called Bruin fans who sound just as savvy as Chris Fosters, Bill Splashme or a clueless and classless hack like TJ Simers from the LA Times.
None of us are happy with today's loss. Losing sucks. It is going to ruin our Sundays. I know we have experienced many bitter Sundays over last 10 years but we are still not used to it. However, that doesn't entail losing perspective and drawing definitive conclusions right after one game of the season.
There were lot of positives in my book from today's game. I was very encouraged by how our OL looked. I was encouraged by our ground game (especially the solid debut of Malcolm Jones and determined running from Jet Ski). Our special teams was exceptional. Yet at the same time the performances of our defense (especially the scheming from our staff) was disconcerting in the second half. The self inflicted errors through penalties and dropped passes were excruciating. Our WRs as a group were mostly atrocious and that is tough to take given they are supposed to be one of the strongest part of our team.
Then there was Kevin Prince who except for his TD run had one of the more frustrating days as a Bruin QB has had in a while. Yet as frustrating as Prince was I am nowhere close to giving up on him given he was just getting in rhythm. This is coming from someone who clamored for Richard Brehaut through a good chunk of last season. Despite Prince's disappointing stat line, I thought we saw enough from him, which he can build on for coming weeks.
There should be no excuses from coaching staff. We will have plenty of time to hold them accountable if they don't get this program definitively turned around in next 2 seasons. At the same time over here the ridiculous bitching and whining needs to stop. If anyone is looking to hold CRN "accountable" after one game, they will need to find another website. If people have specific points and reflections they want to share, they will need to do methodically and in a sober manner. Long reflections should go into fanposts. People should lay out solutions and more importantly what we should be specifically working on for Stanford.
There are lot of room for constructive criticisms. However, what we are not going to tolerate is definitive conclusions based on datapoints from one freaking game. More on this game later tomorrow ... err ... I guess I mean today.
GO BRUINS.