The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly for Tulane's Loss to Ole Miss
In this story:
With everything to gain and nothing to lose, the 11th seeded Green Wave football team entered Vaught Hemingway stadium to battle the 6th seed, Ole Miss; the second time these two had played. Things did not go much better for the Wave, as the Rebels scored early, held off Tulane, and poured it on in the 2nd half for a 41-10 victory over the men in Green.
The Good
Besides the game, everything else was good. We got to the Ole Miss campus early to experience the unique experience of The Grove. We'll have a complete story on that encounter in a story later this week. Here is one example of what we saw.
That is just a sample. There were thousands of tents, zip-tied together across this particular portion of the University of Mississippi campus. In fact, it has grown so much that there is now an additional section closer to Vaught Hemingway stadium called The Circle. Though not nearly as big, just as extravagant with spreads of food you wouldn't believe, signs that trumpet the exit of Lane Kiffin, and chandeliers. Yep. Chandeliers.
The Ole Miss fans invited us into their tents more than once to share their food and drink, talking politely about the game and the food. This was the kindest tailgate experience I've ever encountered. Each Ole Miss fan we spoke to was more than happy to share their bounty with us, complementing the "Tulane fans" for being nothing like those people from LSU. We heard that quite a bit.
More Good
Vaught Hemingway stadium is quaint by SEC standards. Seating of just over 68-thousand makes the noise more tolerable. It's gigantic scoreboard above the South end zone is at least three times the size of the biggest one at Yulman.
The fans yelled in unison quite often. When the Rebels would gain another set of downs, the PA announcer would call out, "First Down," and the crowd would answer back in chorale style, "Ole Miss." Truthfully, it got old by the end of the game, for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, the experience was easily my favorite time in an SEC stadium ever.
The Bad
Nope, not the game. We're saving that for last. The parking experience at Ole Miss was a little disorganized. We were sent to the wrong parking lot at first, then sent to a remnants of a mall parking lot across from the Ole Miss campus entrance. However, shuttle busses picked us up close to where we parked and took us to The Grove before the game and back to the lot afterwards. So, a wash.
The Ugly
The game. The whole frickin' game. It was ugly from the opening, three-play drive by Ole Miss for a touchdown, to the lack of consistency by the offense, to what looked like a zone defense by the secondary that did not do a good job of tackling, to a non-existent pass rush. There is a reason for this.
As we said back in September, the skilled people of the Ole Miss offense and of the defensive secondary are athletically superior to Tulane in almost every way.
Rebel wideouts were consistently in open space against the Tulane D. Though the Ole Miss running back, Kewan Lacy, was good, he constantly found large holes to run through.
Tulane linebackers weren't in position to make plays for most of the afternoon, and when they were, they didn't make them because of how physically talented Ole Miss wideouts were.
Ole Miss quarterback, Trinidad Chambliss could have had dinner and picked up the plates by the time the Tulane defensive line got close to him. Some of Chambliss' passes were timed to be completed in the crease of the Tulane zone, but it didn't look like Wave defenders made the adjustments to change that.
Now Tulane gets to sit back and think "What if" just like its fans do, while we await the naming of new staff for recently promoted Will Hall and that pesky transfer portal.
Doug has covered a gamut of sporting events in his fifty-plus years in the field. He started doing sideline reporting for Louisiana Tech football games for the student radio station. Doug was Sports Director for KNOE-AM/FM in Monroe in the mid-80s, winning numerous awards from the Louisiana Sports Writers Association for Best Sportscast and Best Play-by-Play. High school play-by-play for teams in Monroe, Natchitoches, New Orleans, and Thibodaux, LA dot his resume. He did college play-by-play for Northwestern State University in Natchitoches for nine years. Then, moving to the Crescent City, Doug did television PBP of Tulane games and even filled in for legendary Tulane broadcaster, Ken Berthelot in the only game Kenny ever missed while doing the Green Wave games. His father was an alumnus of Tulane in the 1940s, so Doug has attended Tulane football games in old Tulane Stadium, the Superdome, and Yulman. He was one of the 86,000 plus on December 1, 1973, sitting in the North End Zone to seeTulane shutout the LSU Tigers, 14-0. He was there when the Posse ruled Fogelman and in Turchin when the Wave made it to the World Series. He currently is the public address voice of the Tulane baseball team.