The USF Bulls opened their 2016-17 men’s basketball season with a win against Florida A & M, 84-73.  The Bulls were led in scoring by Penn State junior transfer, Geno Thorpe, who had 19.  The Rattlers led the first four minutes of the game, before a layup by Thorpe gave USF the lead.  The Bulls would hold that lead into halftime, leading by as many as 15 before going into the locker rooms leading, 45-32.

It is Week 11 of the season and USF has yet to make the cut in the top 25 of the three major polls.  The National Playoff Poll is in its second weekly publishing, but won’t be covered in this post simply because USF isn’t there, yet.

The USF men’s basketball team opened their 2016-17 season in an exhibition matchup with Nova Southeastern University. The Bulls were led by redshirt freshman forward, Tulio Da Silva, with 26 points. The 6-7 Da Silva racked up the first double-double of his career by bringing down 16 rebounds. Freshman, Michael Bibby, and sophomore, Troy Holston, covered the guard duties in the absence of preseason all-conference team selectee, Jahmal McMurray. McMurray is serving a six game suspension for violating undisclosed team rules. Holston and Bibby picked up the slack, with 15 and 12 points apiece, respectively.

The Sharks took the lead early and led for the first three minutes of the game. With 16:13 left in the first half, junior forward, Bo Ziegler, gave USF their first lead of the game with a layup. From there on, it was all Bulls, who had leads of up to 19 before going into halftime leading 40-31. They also led all of the second half, hitting 15 point leads on multiple occasions. Holston scored 10 of his 15 points in the second half.

For Nova Southeastern, it was a strong performance in the paint by senior center, Harrison Goodrick, who led his team with 25 points and 12 rebounds. Junior forward, Lukas Landgren, put up 13 for the Sharks.

The Bulls will host the Florida A&M Rattlers on Friday at 7 PM at the Sun Dome to begin regular season play.

 

The midpoint in the college football season is past and the College Football Playoff has released their first rankings of the season. These rankings are created by the playoff Selection Committee. The committee consists of Kirby Hocutt, Director of Athletics at Texas Tech, Barry Alvarez, Director of Athletics at Wisconsin-Madison, Jeff Bower, former Southern Miss Head Coach, Herb Deromedi, former Head Coach of Central Michigan, Tom Jernstedt, former NCAA Vice President, Bobby Johnson, former Head Coach of Vanderbilt, Jeff Long, Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics of Arkansas, Rob Mullens, Director of Athletics at Oregon, Dan Radakovich, Director of Athletics at Clemson, Condoleeza Rice, Stanford Professor and former United States Secretary of State, Steve Wieberg, former USA Today reporter, and Tyrone Willingham, former college football head coach.

Week 9 of the college football season has come and gone and the Bulls are surprisingly 7-2. After nine weeks of the prediction game, there is now a tie for first place as BullEsh wins the Week 9 prediction. With two wins on the season, he ties RaginBull76. Congratulations, BullEsh! Only three players predicted a USF win against Navy.  Week 10 is a bye week for the Bulls, so a reminder post will appear sometime next week. 

Some games take time to develop, a few series to really get going. This was not one of those games. In this second all-time matchup between these teams, USF got out to a big start, scoring on their first four possessions of the game. The first score, coming just one minute and 11 seconds into the game, was a breakout run by Bulls’ quarterback, Quinton Flowers for a 63 yard touchdown.

Welcome to your official unofficial gameday chat as the USF Bulls host the Navy Midshipmen.  Cheers and jeers are welcome here!


Who:                   Navy Midshipmen vs. USF Bulls
What:                  American Athletic Conference Football Game
When:                 Friday, October 28th, 2016
Where:                Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, Florida
Why:                    Conference Championship Implications

The University of South Florida Bulls host the Navy Midshipmen on Friday night in just the second matchup between these two teams. The only win in this series went to the Naval Academy in 2015.

The Poll Watch continues, even though USF is unlikely to break the top 25 this year, considering they have two losses to teams who have losses of their own. However, half the season has passed with the blog in monitoring mode, it made sense to watch a little longer, if nothing else but to see what happens. For brevity, only polls that rank USF and only those teams above USF will be listed here, going forward.

Send your warm congratulations out to President of my Prime for winning the Week 8 prediction challenge.  President of my Prime was the only one to cast a win vote for Temple.  RaginBull76 still leads the game with two wins.  President of my Prime joins BullEsh, TheBombasticBull, Walter Sobchak, and usf_fan in a second place tie  Please post your predictions for the Navy game in the comments here so they will be easier to find. 

 

The USF Bulls gave another running back a career day as Ryquell Armstead and the Temple Owls ran all over them. Armstead has 594 total yards in his two year career, 210 courtesy of a flimsy USF defense in Friday night’s nationally televised game.

Welcome to your official unofficial Gameday chat as the USF Bulls take on the Temple Owls.  Cheers and jeers are welcome here!

Who:       USF Bulls vs. Temple Owls
What:      American Athletic Conference football game
When:     Friday, October 21st, 7 PM
Where:    Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia, PA
Why:       Conference title implications

The University of South Florida Bulls go on the road to Philadelphia to visit the Temple University Owls on Friday evening. The game will just the third game played between the two schools, who have each won one game in the series. Each of those wins went to the home team.

USF has finally started to gain some ground in the AP Poll. The AP Poll is the poll of writers, described in depth in Week 4.