It’s a box score review... with emojis!
We decided that Nick’s Box Score Takeaways and Jamie’s EMOJICAP were covering the same territory, so starting this week they’re teaming up for EMOJICAP.
Your South Florida... sorry, No. 23/24 South Florida Bulls took home the War on I-4 trophy on Saturday by defeating C. Florida 48-31 and clinching their first 10-win season in school history.
Here’s the final box score:
On to the emojis!
At this point, the “9-5” duo of Quinton Flowers and Marlon Mack need to return next year for the sole purpose of trying to one-up each other, like two kids trying to break each other’s high score in a video game.
The two combined for 307 yards and 7.7 yards per carry on the ground, recording another laundry list of accomplishments in the process:
Flowers broke Mack’s single season rushing record with 1,425 yards on the ground in his ninth career 100+ yard rushing performance.
Mack joins Warrick Dunn and Dalvin Cook as the only players in history of the state of Florida to have three 1,000-yard seasons during their collegiate career. Also racked up his 20th 100+ yard game of his career.
Mack extended his career touchdown total to 32, including 15 this season, while Flowers has accounted for a total of 37 this year.
Let’s go right ahead and play this touchdown on an infinite loop forever. Marlon Mack wears #5, and there are five fingers on the hand he stiff-armed half of UCF’s defense with.
NOBODY was stopping Marlon Mack!@USFFootball leads UCF, 24-7, in the 2nd quarter on @CBSSportsNet pic.twitter.com/LORN6CrpLP
— American Football (@American_FB) November 26, 2016
A huge theme of this season has been this defense doing more breaking than bending, letting teams run wild all over them. The unit came up with key red zone stops the past two weeks to seal USF wins, but Saturday saw them deliver one of their best efforts of the season against a UCF offense that’s obviously still figuring things out in Scott Frost’s first season.
The “Bull Sharks” (if you choose to still call them that) held the Knights offense to only 1.8 yards per carry on 35 rushing attempts, and really made things uncomfortable for freshman quarterback McKenzie Milton.
Averaging a pedestrian 12% havoc rate, the unit came away with 17% vs. UCF. They had seven tackles for loss, four pass breakups, a Juwuan Brown scoop and score for a touchdown, and long-overdue interceptions from Nate Godwin and Auggie Sanchez. Pretty solid final game effort overall.
Speaking of Godwin, though... that dropped interception was just tragic. UCF ended up scoring a touchdown on that drive. Glad he was able to redeem himself later.
Was USF’s last touchdown really necessary? The answer is yes, because if you get a chance to stick the knife in a little bit in a game like this, you do it. Everyone wanted the Bulls to punch that last score in. The students, the paying customers, the team, the coaches, the football staffers, everyone watching on TV, everyone who picked USF to cover. Everyone. And you know UCF would do the same thing if they had a chance.
By the way, that counted as a fourth-down conversion. The Bulls are now a hilarious 15 for 16 on fourth down this year. The only team to stop USF on fourth down was UConn, something Bob Diaco can put on his resume when he’s looking for a new job.
UCF, please toss your gray (or silver, or whatever not-a-school-color they are) uniforms in the nearest trash can. They can go in there with everyone else’s hideous gray uniforms, which should also be trashed. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
SB Nation’s Steven Godfrey had the biggest story of the day — SOMEBODY BROUGHT THEIR DOG INTO THE STADIUM!
USF STADIUM DOG (told y’all) pic.twitter.com/sCGAFHq90b
— Steven Godfrey (@38Godfrey) November 26, 2016
Update: THE DOG WAS DANCING.
Does your football team have a dancing dog? Mine does #USF #GoBulls pic.twitter.com/6A6FqRo1Xc
— shannon (@srlong90) November 26, 2016
WHO’S A GOOD DOG? STADIUM DOG’S A GOOD DOG.
(plays fetch with Stadium Dog and rubs its belly for an hour straight, forgets about rest of post)