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Spring is in the air. Although, in Tampa, spring feels a lot like summer and fall. But, the calendar says it is spring, and spring football practice begins next week.

Looking Back

The USF women’s basketball regular season has come to an end after another embarrassing loss, 96-68, at the hands of the #1 UConn Huskies. An interesting note is that 94 of those points was scored by the starting five players on UConn’s team. It was if the embarrassment was intentional, not in the sense that players should always be trying to score points, but like making USF look bad was important. In the end, making USF look bad makes UConn’s conference look bad as the Bulls finish the regular season unranked, having been beaten by the Huskies 102-37 earlier in the season.

Earlier this week, the Graze shared another embarrassing story about the USF men’s basketball team leaving their top two players in Houston, accidentally. 247 Sports has reviewed the facts of the story, which began with reports by a player’s mother, that apparently do not add up. They were definitely left in Houston, but they had less than an hour between disembarking from their flight from Tulsa and departing on their flight to Tampa. The real time between getting off one plane and beginning the boarding process would have been far less than an hour, drawing questions about the players being asleep in the airport.

Looking Forward

It’s finally March and USF fans are probably excited to try out the shiny new football head coach they got for an early Christmas present. How he’ll rebound at USF after what happened in Texas remains a big question. USA Today’s Shanna Lockwood analyzed the team and thinks Charlie Strong will win, but it will take time to do so. Strong earned a reputation as a solid defensive coach during his tenure at Florida. However, in the seven seasons since leaving Florida, his defense ranked 57th in three of the four years at Louisville, ranking 7th his final year there. It was the reverse at Texas, where his first year defense ranked 8th, but the following two years averaged 61st.

The USF Ice Bulls are headed to the ACHA Nationals, but they need your help. The team, which is not funded by the athletic department, has set up a Go Fund Me campaign to raise money for their trip to Columbus, Ohio. The team is partially self-funded, with some funds coming from the USF Student Government, which sponsors the team in lieu of the athletic department. If you want to help, go here.

Lots of publications have released their preseason rankings for the 2017 football season. Most have USF in the top 25. College Football News’ Pete Fiutak sees them at 36.

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