During Week Eight in the Southeastern Conference football season the roof finally caved in on the ranked teams.
It was bound to happen sooner or later with so many ranked teams in the Top 25. They were bound to play each other and knock each other off, but the odd thing is that the ranked teams were mostly knocked off by unranked teams.
Georgia was beaten by unranked Vanderbilt. LSU was knocked off by an unranked Ole Miss team. South Carolina was beaten by an unranked Tennessee team. Only two of the ranked teams lost to ranked teams—No. 6 Texas A&M was beaten by No. 24 Auburn and No. 22 Florida lost to No. 14 Missouri.
When the carnage was cleared away only three SEC teams still control their own destinies—unbeatens Alabama and Missouri, of course, and amazingly the Auburn Tigers. That’s right! The Tigers who were 3-9 overall and 0-8 in the SEC last season are sitting at 6-1 and 3-1 in the conference.
If Alabama or Auburn wins out, one of them will be out of the running since the two meet on Nov. 30th. Missouri has it easier since the Tigers have a two-game lead in the SEC East.
The losses by Georgia and Florida were not total shocks since both have been diluted by injuries to key players. It is going to be almost impossible for either team to make a run at Missouri, even though the Tigers have lost quarterback James Franklin to an injury. Maty Mauk stepped in and kept the Tigers undefeated.
“He’s a great competitor. Sometimes he tries to make too much happen. He’ll fire it down field when we have something close that’s open and he’ll learn from that,” said Missouri coach Gary Pinkel. “But I couldn’t be more pleased with him. If you looked at him in high school, that’s what you saw on tape every time you saw him play. He’s a playmaker. You saw that when he ran that touchdown in at the end of the quarter. It’s great to see a back-up quarterback to come in and play at that kind of a level.”
“It’s a stepping stone to where we want to be, and just for everybody out there to have the confidence in me to know that we were going to get the job done,” said Mauk. “It means a lot to me.”
Vanderbilt’s 31-27 win over 15th-ranked Georgia was the first for the Commodores over the Bulldogs in 22 years but it didn’t come without a cost. Vanderbilt quarterback Austyn Carta-Samuels was injured.
“I feel for the kid,” said Vanderbilt coach James Franklin. “Being a part of this program is giving him great chances… I’m very proud of him. His leadership has been unbelievable. This conference is brutal. That’s why it’s so respected nationally. I’m proud to be a part of Vanderbilt, part of the SEC and part of this community.”
Tennessee’s win over South Carolina on Michael Palardy’s game-winning field goal was a big step for coach Butch Jones and his program.
“It meant everything to me. It’s been a long time coming,” said Palardy.” I want to give it up to the offense and defense for putting me in that position. I couldn’t have done it without the plays that they made. The biggest thing for me was coming back from my missed field goal earlier in the game, and just maintaining that focus. I tried my best to just maintain my composure and take it one kick at a time.”
How did Jones celebrate his big victory? He sang Rocky Top of course.
“I sang it with the band and then I sang it in the locker room,” he said. “That is the greatest song in the world. It is a pride of who we are.”
The biggest win, however, was Auburn’s win over Texas A&M in College Station. The win has the Tigers thinking about championships. Actually it is not too early if the Tigers can keep it as a goal and take it game-by-game.
The Tigers should have no trouble this weekend with Florida Atlantic or the next game with Arkansas, but then comes the closing stretch at Tennessee and home games with Georgia and Alabama. Auburn must keep its focus if the Tigers dream season is going to continue.
“We challenged our players to improve each week, and they have done that,” said Malzahn after the Texas A&M win. “We’ve been working on getting our edge back, and we are getting closer.”
The players realize that they still have work to be done and they seem to be keeping their focus.
“Our team is going back to the top. We are just now getting our edge back,” said quarterback Nick Marshall, who led Auburn on the game-winning 75-yard, 13-play drive. “On the last drive we went out there and executed. We knew we were going to be the more conditioned team in the second half, and it showed. This win is about confidence. We’re going to take one game at a time and keep moving forward.”
Running back Tre Mason came up big with 178 yards rushing on 27 carries and the 5-yard touchdown that was the final dagger into the Aggies’ heart with just over a minute to play.
“I was a little emotional after the game,” admitted Mason. “I was happy the whole time; those were tears of happiness. This was a statement game. The statement that we want to put across is that we are coming. We are getting better from here on out. You have to believe to achieve. We did that.”
After the most disappointing season in many years, it has gotten to the point where the rest of the SEC might need to start paying attention to the Tigers.