Tulane-Tulsa: The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly
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The Tulane football team was embarrassed on Saturday, as a homecoming crowd saw the Green Wave get stomped by visiting Tulsa, 60-10.
The Green Wave side of the game featured a struggling offense, a sieve-like defense, and a group that didn't follow up on an excellent effort in the 2nd half of the Charlotte game just a week earlier with anything close to the same endeavor. Here's what we saw from the game.
The Good
Dagan Bruno
The sophomore from John Curtis had his most extensive showing on the field, seeing action in the final quarter of the Tulsa blowout. Bruno went 4-for-6 for 43-yards and his first collegiate touchdown. It was a rare bright spot on a very lackluster day.
The Bad
Predictable Play Calling
After a shining night of creative offensive play-calling by Tulane coach Will Hall against Charlotte, the Green Wave offense went into a cocoon against the Golden Hurricane.
What do we mean? We charted the plays, then checked with the official stats, and then with someone who is the best resource we could think of, Guerry Smith of NOLA.com. All confirmed what we felt was going on.
The Tulane offense would call
a pass,
then a run,
then a pass,
then a run,
and repeat this pattern for their first three drives.
That's sixteen plays in a row, alternating the pass with the run every time. If us media people could figure that out...
The Ugly
Everything Else
Truth be told, we like being around this group of athletes and coaches, so it's hard to say out loud that this Tulsa game was a humiliation. The homecoming crowd of 27-thousand plus was restless early and mostly gone by the third quarter and for good reason.
Besides the predictability described above, the Tulane offense couldn't get a running game going, couldn't protect their quarterback, and couldn't get open on passes. The Tulane defense was not getting to ball carriers until after they had cleared the line of scrimmage, allowed wide open receivers, and gave up chunk play after chunk play. Even the normally reliable special teams had its problems.
Getting Personal
This loss reminded us of when LSU punished the Green Wave 62-0 in 1965. There was a horrible, sinking feeling after that loss, one that can only be described as overwhelmingly sad.
That's what Saturday felt like. It wasn't an angry day for us, the way some fans have reacted. It was just a very sad day, one that seemed to happen all to often in what seemed like the distant past for Tulane.
And now that feeling has returned.
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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.