Tulsa’s sorry performance against Bowling Green was discouraging on a lot of fronts.
The 34-7 loss at Bowling Green raises a lot of issues for Tulsa. For starters, the Golden Hurricane has little time to fix the problems. TU faces Colorado State, Oklahoma and Iowa State in September.
“Everyone takes some responsibility for this,” said TU coach Bill Blankenship.
Some of TU’s issues on defense in the second half were inexperience.
That is to be expected, especially considering Tulsa’s lack of offense and multitude of kicking problems.
The defense was playing well enough to win during the first half, a 6-0 deficit to the Falcons.
But, the offense never came around and the defense finally collapsed under an avalanche of mistakes in the second half.
Blankenship said earlier in the week that the offense would have to carry bigger part of the load early in the year as the defense got experience.
That did not happen. As a result, the heat was on the defenders from the start.
Yes, Bowling Green has a decent defense but the Falcons are not Alabama. What was not expected was the sad performance of Tulsa’s offense, pretty much ineffective throughout the game.
TU did gain 273 yards but a large chunk of that came after Bowling Green had a 34-0 lead.
The Golden Hurricane expected to be much better passing. But, the Hurricane was very inconsistent and couldn’t put together any type of sustained drive.
So, there’s work to be done. Actually, there is a lot of work to be done.
The offense has to be better. The punt game problems, and there were many, has to be fixed. So does the field goal problems. You have to be able to hit field goals inside 40 yards. TU missed two short field goals at Bowling Green.
And, the defense can’t get pushed around up front. Bowling Green ran for 233 yards.
It is only one game. Tulsa needs to make sure it was just one game and not a trend.
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