Would the momentum from the win against USC carry over or would we suffer a letdown? It was a gorgeous sunny day and with it being Homecoming weekend, there was a tailgate for the students. The food was decent but the beer they promised us sadly didn't materialise. The tailgate was also supposed to last till 2:30 when kick off was at 2! Outside the stadium, the 6th man club (basketball student section) was promoting an event next Saturday inside Maples. I like how they're having more of these events (there was the White Plaza thing as well) even if the men's basketball team is probably the last team that needs it. Speaking of them, "midnight madness" happened last night at Cal State Stanislaus.
There was a decent sized contingent of purple-clad TCU fans in the stands. Quite an impressive road trip if they made it all the way here from Texas. This time, however, they weren't in the usual visitor's corner diagonally across from us but in the corner on our side. I have to say that their horned frog mascot (Superfrog) looked pretty lame. The band was reinforced by alums and their sheer numbers were impressive although the older cheerleaders got a chuckle from the students in the first few rows. As is the Stanford tradition for sporting events, seats only really filled up 5 minutes before kick off. One cool thing was the Captain Comeback Corner by the player entrance area:
When the game started, Pritchard and his receiving corps looked tentative with one overthrown ball, which would have led to a TD on the first play from scrimmage, and several drops. The defense brought its usual bend but do no break scheme and when Prithcard finally settled down and Harbaugh went for it on 4th down, the throw to Sherman was clutch and on the money. From that point onwards, we looked great offensively except for the series when TC inexplicably came in and took 2 sacks after holding onto the ball for too long when we were in good field position. I couldn't see where Pritchard was during that series. He looked fine prior to it though. Defense and those face mask penalties were another story though.
Half time brought on a massive LJSUMB show which was ok but by no means a home run. The Class of 1957 took the field too. Without a doubt, the best part was the highlights from the USC game:
The second half started off well too and the offense looked great. When we took a 14 point lead, the thought of how big a win this could be crossed my mind. It was clearly premature as we couldn't quite recover that kick off fumble and our defense failed to get a stop for what seemed like the entire half. That one face mask penalty on what turned out to be TCU's game winning drive seemed pretty questionable to me. At the end of the day, Tavita couldn't quite manufacture another miracle comeback even though he gave it a good run. It appeared to me that the O-line just couldn't buy him that extra time in the second half, after looking great in the first.
A win would have been huge and made a bowl seem very possible but at least our offense looked good (and we don't even have Toby Gerhart back yet). Hopefully we'll get him for Oregon State and at the very least, Washington at home. As for our defense, I guess we can't expect to play against Booty every week.
~ Zhihao
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