Week 11 of the Southeastern Conference football season saw Alabama clear a giant hurdle in a convincing fashion with its 38-17 win over LSU. Also, Auburn’s big 55-24 win over Tennessee left only the Crimson Tide and the Tigers as the only teams in the SEC West to control their own destiny.
It’s still not as clear cut in the SEC East, where Missouri is the only team that controls its own destiny, but the Tigers still have two rather big hurdles standing between them and the SEC East championship with upcoming games against Ole Miss on the road and Texas A&M at home.
Alabama’s game against LSU was tied at 17-17 in the third quarter before the Crimson Tide’s brute strength on offense and its smothering defense took control. T. J. Yeldon rushed for 133 yards on 25 carries and scored two touchdowns, both coming after LSU tied the score in the third quarter. Kenyan Drake added 65 yards on 10 carries, only eight yards less than LSU stud tailback Jeremy Hill.
On the Crimson Tide’s second drive of the second quarter, senior quarterback AJ McCarron set the Alabama career passing yard record. With his 179 yards in the game, McCarron now has 7,997 for his career.
“No matter what the record in this game, though, it always seems like both teams come out in this game and they have high expectations for how they want to play and what they want to do,” said Alabama coach Nick Saban. “But our guys did a great job of keeping their poise and staying focused on the things that they needed to do. [They] had to overcome some adversity in the game, but [I’m] really pleased with the way we got control of the game in the second half.
“We have a lot of veteran players who do a great job in terms of leadership, and I think they understand what it means to be Alabama football players. We still have some very tough challenges, but I think our team showed a lot of character, especially in the second half in terms of the way they competed and the way they played. I’m very proud of the way our guys came out and played in the second half.”
Senior wide receiver Kevin Norwood said, “This is my last time playing against them. It’s been fun, and I’ve always enjoyed playing against them.”
Auburn trailed Tennessee 13-6 before the Tigers outscored the Vols 49-10 the rest of the way behind another strong performance from quarterback Nick Marshall, who rushed for 214 yards and two touchdowns.
“We were just trying to feel them out early,” said Gus Malzahn. “We were curious how they were going to play us. We figured they were going to try to stop the run, roll an extra guy down and play a single high, and they did that. We hit the score early and we kind of figured out what was going on and were able to run the football.”
On another outstanding performance by Marshall, Malzahn said, “He’s a great athlete. He’s starting to understand the offense, he’s making the right decisions and when he gets the ball out in space, he can really do some things.”
Tre Mason had 117 yards on 20 carries and scored three touchdowns as Auburn rolled up 444 yards on the ground.
Missouri rolled over Kentucky behind Maty Mauk’s five touchdown passes, four of which went to Dorial Green-Beckham. Mauk’s five touchdown passes tied the school record set by Chase Daniel.
“Obviously, with your name beside his, it’s a tremendous honor,” said Mauk. “But like I just mentioned, I couldn’t have done it without the five guys up front and the guys that made something happen after they caught the ball today.”
In Gainesville, Vanderbilt came away with a 34-17 win over the reeling Florida Gators. It’s the first Vanderbilt win in Gainesville since 1945 and further enhances the pressure on Florida coach Will Muschamp, who has now lost four consecutive games for the second time in his three seasons as the head coach. Florida has been outscored 37-6 in the first quarter during the four-game losing streak.
“We’ve got to get the ball bouncing our way,” Muschamp said. “You’ve got to create your opportunities. Self-evaluate where you are as a coach and a player and make improvements. That’s what we’re going to do. Unfortunately, right now we’re a very fragile football team. When negative things happen, we kind of snowball it a little bit defensively, offensively and in special teams.”
Florida quarterback Tyler Murphy threw three interceptions but said the Gators are not giving up.
“The guys are disappointed, but we’re going to keep fighting one game at a time. We have South Carolina, so it seems like every week things don’t get easier for us. We have no other choice but to keep fighting,” he said.
Vanderbilt coach James Franklin knows this was a historic win for Vanderbilt.
“I want to start by saying this is a great win for our program,” he said. “There are some things that Larry Leathers gave me that I read to the team that I’m very proud of: first win over Florida since 1988, before any of our players were born; first win in the Swamp since 1945; first time ever to defeat Georgia and Florida in the same season. We’re very proud of those things, and then if you look over our last year and a half, we’re 6-0 in the month of November, which if you study Vanderbilt’s history that hasn’t always been the case this late in the season.
“I’m very proud of our kids and the program in general because of the fact that we just get better as the season goes on. Our kids work hard at developing in practice. They’ve bought in to what we are doing. Individually and collectively as the season goes on we get better, and we’ve done that going into our third year now. I’m very proud of our coaches, very proud of the administrative staff and the players for that.”
The final score was relatively close, but the Texas A&M Aggies were in control of Mississippi State from the opening kickoff until the end in notching the 700th win in Texas A&M history.
Despite scoring 51 points and a banner day by Johnny Manziel, A&M coach Kevin Sumlin sees places where they can improve.
“I thought (Manziel) made enough plays for us to win, made some big plays, really critical plays before the half, I’m sure there’s a couple of them I knew he really wanted to have back, trying to do too much a couple times, but he gave us a chance there. He had five touchdowns, for most people that’s pretty good,” Sumlin said.
“We got to do a better, job, we turned it over, we lost the turnover battle today, we did a terrible job in the penalty department, at critical times. We had two turnovers going in to score, which you’re giving away 14 points or 10 or six at the least. Yeah, we’d like to have those back, and we got to continue to preach that and get better – certainly with our opponents that are coming up.”