SEC Recap: Crazy regular season ends

The craziest regular season in recent SEC history ended with another wild weekend of action.

Mississippi State started the fun Friday early afternoon by scoring 17 points in the final eight minutes to knock off hated rival Ole Miss 17–14 and send Rebel coach Ed Orgeron to the unemployment line.

Later that day, Arkansas outlasted No. 1 LSU 50–48 in a triple-overtime classic in Baton Rouge. Not only did Les Miles’ hopes of leading the Tigers to a national title evaporate, but his chances of landing his dream job at Michigan might have been damaged by his poor clock management late in the fourth quarter.

Then, on Saturday afternoon, Kentucky rallied from a 31–14 deficit late in the third quarter to force overtime against Tennessee only to lose in the fourth overtime 52–50 on a failed two-point conversion. 

Saturday night, in a defensive struggle, Auburn held off Alabama 17–10 to give the Tigers an unprecedented sixth straight win over the Crimson Tide. Nick Saban, who began his tenure in T-town with six wins in the first eight games, now limps into the bowl season on a four-game losing streak.

Team of the Week — Tennessee
Tennessee might not be the best team in the SEC East, but the Vols will be representing the division in the league title game thanks to a gutty 52–50 quadruple-overtime win over Kentucky in Lexington. The Vols twice held leads of 17 points in the second half, but UK rallied and eventually forced overtime on a 20-yard field goal on the final play of the fourth quarter.

Tennessee will be the first team with two league losses of 24 points or more to play in the SEC Championship Game. The Vols, 6–2 in the league, lost at Florida 59–20 in September and 41–17 at Alabama in October. They won three games by three points or less, including two in overtime.

Disappointment of the Week — LSU
With so much at stake, LSU simply couldn’t get it done. The Tigers, the top ranked team in the nation, lost at home to an Arkansas team that lost by 21 points to Tennessee in its previous road game. LSU can still win the SEC title and have a very good season. It just won’t be a special season.

Player of the Week — Darren McFadden, RB, Arkansas
It might have been a little too late to get back to the top of the Heisman Trophy chase, but it definitely wasn’t a little too little. Darren McFadden almost single-handedly beat No. 1 LSU with a dominating performance in Baton Rouge. The junior tailback rushed for 206 yards and three touchdowns on 32 carries and also threw a touchdown pass in the Razorbacks’ 50–48 triple-overtime win. McFadden has rushed for 388 yards in his last two games against the (supposedly) ferocious LSU defense.

Freshman of the Week — Eric Berry, DB, Tennessee
Tennessee’s Eric Berry recorded a career-high 14 tackles in the Vols’ 52–50 win over Kentucky in Lexington. Berry, a true freshman who has played both corner and safety this year, leads all SEC freshmen with 76 total tackles.

Low Tide
There aren’t many who believe that Nick Saban won’t be successful in Tuscaloosa, but the Bama haters are surely enjoying the Tide’s current struggles. Alabama lost its fourth straight game Saturday night (and its sixth straight to Auburn) to drop to 6–6 overall and 4–4 in the league.

The once-mighty Tide endured only four non-winning SEC seasons from 1959-1996 but have gone .500 or worse eight times in the past 11 seasons.

The 2007 season began with great promise — the Tide were 4–1 in the league after a mid-season rout over Tennessee — but ended with frustration.

“The last four games, we just didn't finish the way we wanted to,” Saban said. “I take full responsibility for it. I failed the players in not getting them to be able to finish the season like we wanted to.”

Tub keeps on winning
Tommy Tuberville never gets mentioned among the top coaches in the country, but he is building quite a resume at Auburn. Over the weekend, Tub picked up his sixth straight win over rival Alabama and in the process clinched another winning season in conference play. The Tigers went 2–6 in his first year (1999) but have enjoyed a winning SEC season in each of the past eight seasons. It is the longest period of sustained success in the SEC in school history.

The veteran coach was rumored to be a top target at Texas A&M, but the Aggies hired Mike Sherman to a long-term deal Monday morning. Tuberville never publicly expressed any interest in the job and is in the process of working out a new deal with the Auburn administration.

Gators own FSU
Florida recorded its fourth straight win over rival Florida State behind yet another dominating performance from Tim Tebow and the Gator offense. Florida rolled up 541 yards of total offense, led by Tebow’s passing (262 yards and three touchdowns) and Percy Harvin’s running (157 yards on 16 attempts). These eye-popping offensive numbers overshadowed another fine defensive effort against the Seminoles. Florida State has not scored more than 14 points against the mighty Gators since 2003 and has scored a total of four touchdowns in that span.   

Brown delivers
Thomas Brown didn’t have the career at Georgia that most expected when he burst onto the scene with four 100-yard games (and three others with 80-plus yards) as a true freshman in 2004. But the senior tailback sure went out in style, rushing for 139 yards on only 17 attempts in his final regular season game as a Bulldog, a 31–17 win over rival Georgia Tech. It was only the third 100-yard game for Brown since his freshman season. The Tucker, Ga., native has battled various injuries over the past two seasons, including a torn ACL suffered last year against Vanderbilt. Heading into his final game, likely a BCS bowl, Brown has 2,573 yards (on a healthy 5.3-yard average) and 22 rushing touchdowns.

Bitter defeat for UK
One game doesn’t make a season — either positively or negatively — but Kentucky coach Rich Brooks is well aware that there is a big difference between 8–4 and 7–5 and 5–3 and 4–4.

“I just told them that I was sick,” said Brooks, when asked what he told his team after the Cats’ quadruple-overtime loss to Tennessee. “… I am disappointed for our seniors, disappointed for our fans and disappointed about a lot of things. 8–4 is a lot better than 7–5. Now Tennessee goes to the championship game and we wait to see what we are going to do. We are just very, very disappointed for those seniors to leave when this could have been a great finish for them. But you have to give Tennessee credit, they made a lot of good plays.”

Kentucky is no doubt headed back to a bowl game, but after starting the season 6–1 and climbing into the top 10 in all the polls, a 7–5 finish will be considered a disappointment.

“Coach Brooks has been telling us for a long time that once you are an ex-player these games mean a lot more to you,” said guard Jason Leger. “Now that I am a senior I know that coach is right. I wanted this win more than any game my entire time here at Kentucky. At the end of the day the problem was we didn’t execute and we got beat.”

Dogs winning ugly
Mississippi State capped off its finest regular season since 2000 by surging past rival Ole Miss 17–14 in Starkville to record its seventh win of the season and fourth in league play. Once again, it wasn’t pretty — MSU had 273 total yards and only 10 first downs — but once again the Bulldogs found a way to win. State was outgained in six of its eight SEC games, including three of its four wins.

MSU’s offensive numbers are down from last year (103rd in total offense in 2006, 112th in ’07), but the Dogs jumped from 41st to 28th in total defense.

Coach O produces 0 wins
The Ed Orgeron era ended over the weekend after the Rebels failed to win an SEC game for the first time since the 1982 season. The final numbers for Coach O: in three years, 10–25 overall and 3–21 in the SEC. The 10 wins represent the worst three-year run at Ole Miss since the mid-‘40s, when the post-World War II Rebs won a total eight games from 1942-44. Ole Miss has suffered through four straight losing SEC seasons, its longest streak in school history.

Carolina woes
South Carolina’s struggles this season can be directly linked to the Gamecocks’ inability to run the ball consistently and stop the run. South Carolina ranked last in the SEC in both rushing and rushing defense. The Gamecock defense gave up at least 200 yards rushing five times, while the offense failed to top the 200-yard mark once against a Division I-A opponent.

In the 23–21 loss to Clemson Saturday night, the Gamecocks were unable to protect a one-point lead in the final five minutes. On their final possession, they picked up a first down on a 16-yard Cory Boyd run, but the next three plays (all Boyd runs) netted only seven yards. The final play, a 3rd-and-4, gained one yard.

“We just thought we might could run for four yards,” Carolina coach Steve Spurrier said after the game. “That was dumb on my part, because we hadn’t run for four yards hardly all night.”

After a USC punt, Clemson marched 61 yards on nine plays to set up Mark Buchholtz’s 35-yard field goal as time expired.

Novembers to forget
After improving to 5–3 with a 24–13 win over Miami (Ohio) on Oct. 27, Vanderbilt dropped the final four games to end the season with a 5–7 mark. The 0–4 record in November continued a troubling trend: the Commodores historically struggle in every month but have been especially bad in November. Since the start of the 2000 season, Vanderbilt is 3–24 in the final month of the regular season (including a Dec. 1 game in 2001) compared to 22–43 in the first two months.

For a (sort of) positive stat, Vanderbilt’s 14 wins since 2005 are the most in a three-year period since the 1982-85 teams combined to win 15. Gerry DiNardo’s final three teams (and first three teams) combined to win 13 games while playing an 11-game schedule. This current run of 14 wins includes two 12-game seasons.

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