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I’ll add this, @Roy Hinojosa, that when Sark mentioned after the game that the offense has mentality/motivation issues, that’s referring to the running game in short-yardage situations. You can’t scheme your way out of those. At some point, guys have to be willing to fire off the ball with everything they’ve got, play with great pad level, get under the defender and run your feet. That’s where the motivational stuff comes into play for me. Too many times I see Texas linemen getting knocked back or catching blocks in short-yardage situations. That’s a specific part of the game, IMO, where it’s about will power and toughness more than scheme.

Predicting AP Top 25 college basketball rankings: 5. Texas Longhorns Last season's final ranking: 22 Texas was the "Cinderella" of last season's NCAA Tournament as the lone double-digit seed to reach the Sweet 16. Heading into Year 2 of the Sean Miller era, the expectations will be higher than ever after Texas brought back star big man Matas Vokietaitis and landed David Punch and Isaiah Johnson in the transfer portal. Texas also landed Marcus Spears Jr., the top-ranked player in the 2027 recruiting class by 247Sports, before he reclassified up to join the Longhorns one year early. Key fifth-year players in eligibility limbo: None https://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/ap-top-25-college-basketball-rankings-preseason-poll-florida-duke-illinois/ 5. Texas Strengths: Sean Miller and Texas raided the transfer portal early with Isaiah Johnson and David Punch among the key additions ready to play alongside breakout center Matas Vokietaitis. They then doubled down with a big recruiting cycle, including Austin Goosby and reclassified freshman Marcus Spears Jr. Questions: This Longhorns team brings in 11 new faces to the roster, more than any team around them in the projected AP Poll. They also faced a preseason injury, with transfer guard Mikey Lewis going down recently. https://www.on3.com/news/college-basketball-rankings-predicting-the-preseason-ap-poll-top-25-as-2026-27-season-approaches-2/

Time of possession against Florida: Florida: 38:11 Texas: 21:49.....Good lord. Texas' drives that lasted for more than 2 minutes: 6/11 (one of them was because of that big play where the refs missed an egregious hold, lets be real). Texas drives after the first quarter (again): 3 plays, 2 yards, 01:15 off the clock, Punt 8 plays, 46 yards, 02:44 off the clock, turnover on downs at midfield (omitted 1 play, 4 yards at the end of the first half) 3 plays, 6 yards, 01:22 off the clock, Punt 3 plays, 2 yards, 01:55 off the clock. Punt 5 plays, 20 yards, 02:10 off the clock, Turnover on downs at midfield again 6 plays, 75 yards, 02:01 off the clock (Bad missed holding call on Sianni). TD, only points after 06:42 left in the first quarter. (besides the punt return TD) 2 plays, 7 yards, 0:34 off the clock, fumble Total after the 1st quarter: 30 total plays, (4.29 plays per drive), 158 yards (about 1/3 from that missed hold big pass play to Mosley)...without that drive= 83 yards total after the first quarter 12:01 time of possession total FOR THREE QUARTERS.... 1:43 average time of drive For three quarters of football against one of the very, very worst defenses in the SEC: Excluding the touchdown drive featuring the (blatantly) missed holding call, the offense produced 83 yards on 24 plays across six possessions, averaging 13.83 yards per drive and scoring zero points. Even with that drive, very not good.

The reality is that the Texas offense has problems that can’t be fixed during the season. Only the transfer portal and staff changes will resolve the issues. They’re that bad, which is Sark’s fault for not properly addressing problem areas when he had the chance. The best Sark can do is put a Band-Aid by honing in on the few things the offense has shown it can execute with the understanding that you’re going to be limited. It’s sad and it’s not at all where I expected the offense to be six games into the season, but I feel that’s where we’re at with this team.

Coach Bates and Texas pick up a new commitment for the class of 28

My good friend, Tony Crosby (look up 1st barefoot kicker and 1963 Natl Champ Horns) told me – we could easily be 2-4. So, I think now is the appropriate time to really count our blessings (cut with the negative waves). They are numerous for all us Texas fans. E.g. We will always be a top five astronomy school having the McDonald observatory as a blessing. So lets list all our blessings OK?

Part of the reason Augie’s rant meant something is because he rarely acted like that, so the team knew it meant something when he did. I think people believe he acted like that after every loss and that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Ok fair. So, in your opinion, what should Sark do to motivate his team? Because whatever message Sark is conveying isn't working. I get there's problems everywhere right now, and a stern talking to isn't going to get it done overnight. At the end of the day, his team isn't responding to his messaging and they're not meeting the moment. Where do we go from here? Who needs to step up? I selfishly want answers like everyone else, and to be clear your reasoning is sound. I'm just not hearing any solutions, just more unveiling of problems.

I echo what six said about the serving. I'll also add that, being there in person, yes, the sets weren't great (especially Rella's at times), but the biggest differences seemed to be 1) an almost non-existent block, 2) the inability to terminate on the attacks, and 3) not having the defense set up right behind the non-existent block. All these seem to be intertwined. At the beginning of the match, it looked like our block was giving them line. And to their credit, FL was hitting it. But our back row defenders were set up too far into the court to even attempt a dig. I get trying to make them hit it out, but after they scored a few times, adjust! And I can't tell you how many times our hitters seemed to hit right at their back row players. Never seemed to swing for the open floor. And then their hitters always found the big swaths of court with no defender near, and we got to see our gals do the elegant yet useless swan dive to dig a ball that was already bouncing into the crowd. Is that a scouting issue? I don't know. But I can't remember a Texas team with so many highly ranked pins that just can't regularly find the floor.

There’s a difference between scheme changes and different play calls and changing who you are as a leader. Players are smart enough to know when you’re trying to be something you’re not. It would have the opposite of the intended effect. Also, truth be told, I’ve grown to hate this clip of Augie because it gets misused and gets brought every time a team on campus loses. ”Be like Augie!” ”Get fired up like Augie!” They need one of those Augie speeches!” If that’s the first thing people think of when they think about Augie Garrido, then they missed the entire point of who he was and what he was about. He loved baseball but he loved people and his life’s mission was to get people to become the best version of themselves. He had a lot of different ways of helping people reach their goals. Yes, he motivated his team with this particular tirade. But that’s one of the many ways he tried to reach his team. If that’s not Sark’s style, it’ll come off as fake and the players won’t pay attention. They’ll tune it out.

I thought that was released in November?

This team has a huge deficit in serving and setting against any really good team they face. Florida has issues with their pin hitters. King/Chaney/Leban/Byrd are not horrible, but they're not as good or as terminal as the pins on other higher seed teams, which is part of the reason why the outcome was so contested. All of them other than Byrd are short, and Byrd, for as athletic as she is in terms of her vertical, is not very nimble. She's slow to her spots and terrible on serve receive/defense. Texas is actually decent in serve receive, but they have issues against great servers - but a lot of teams have problems with great servers. Taylor Parks was giving us fits last night. At times, we could not get her off the service line. Bella Lee, and King were also effective. Same thing happened against OU. Same thing happened against Alabama. Same thing happened regularly in nonconference when we'd get dominated by top teams. Yes, maybe get better at serve receive, but what would also be helpful is if we could return fire, but we can't, because our serving sucks for the most part. Which was the story for last season and why I never thought we had a chance to make it to the Final Four - and is the biggest reason we lost to Wisconsin. Only this season, the serving is several magnitudes less effective. It was interesting to see Elliott so animated on the sideline. I'm curious if he's heard from donors that the Tom Landry look on the bench isn't cutting it as the season goes down in flames. This is the second season of 4 where he decided he needed an upgrade from Swindle and he ended up sacrificing the season as a result. It's 2024 all over again. For much of the same reasons. This offseason is going to be so interesting for me.

Oh I think you know...

I think today I am going to see how often the 3rd and 4th down and shorts are run plays up the middle. Seems like any time first down isn't successful, it is almost always a run play on 2nd down. Very predictable

With all due respect, this is such a loser mentality. I keep hearing from you and a lot of mods that doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. So, let's just have Sark keep doing the same things. Sark getting on his guys would come off disingenuous? I guess we should just lay down then. This is a disappointing response.

I'd love to get a behind the scenes view into the program. Because there are so many issues that I am left scratching my head over. I'm so disappointed. I feel bad for the players and the fans. After the 10-3 season last year, it seemed pretty obvious to me that the issues revolved around our offensive line and our inability to run the ball. But all of our offseason changes with coaches and players revolved around other areas. We replaced our defensive coordinator, which seemed odd given the defense was not the problem. We replaced our RB coach and our top RBs. We openly recruited OL help that were really good pass blockers but not very good run blockers. We just needed to get more physical and cohesive with our ability to run the ball but we tinkered with everything else. The Sark era also seems to have a pattern. Offense is really good during our scripted plays and then we look totally lost, confused, and weak the rest of the game.

💯 I think Bank was out of the box. I’m sure flood helped but that dude was a dude. Flood the recruiter would get credit for that but I’m not sold that the developer gets much.

Crazy to think we are where we are after how the end of last year went for us and after beating OSU I never imagined we would be talking about having one of the worst offenses we have had since the Gilbert days. Smh

I haven’t been impressed with Flood since he came to Texas. He’s really only had one or two good seasons in my eyes and has never been good at developing the interior OL. I think I could make a whole video about the failures of the line from a technical and physical standpoint and it’s year 6! bad footwork, bad technique, slow get offs, weak and just bad all around.

Hutson was bad at center last year. Couldn’t play him there. There is no real solution to being weak in IOL this year. Have to try to mask it with scheme.

AP Poll at 11

1. This is 💯 the responsibility of Sark as he controls scheme and personnel. However, I don’t think the blame is on Sark, the players need to do their job. Give me 50% OL, 35% Arch, and 15% play calling. We can’t run the ball. That is on the OL. Arch is running for his life at times - that is mostly an OL issue. Now with Arch - he is not seeing the field well and holding the ball too long. He is not confident right now and is not content taking small profits like the FL QB was willing to do. Play calling needs to help more but the best play call won’t work if you can’t block and can’t find the open guy. 2. No way Sark straight up benches Arch. If he is going to give KJ some run we are going to have a mystery injury to Arch. 3. I think we need to try Hutson at center and Seymour at LG and see what happens. Let’s go under center and run down hill with Qb boots and waggles. 4. I hear everyone calling for more Bishop and 5 wide. The issue is when you have a QB who is not reading the field well, adding more options and things to read can it more complicated to find the right WR unless you only read half the field. 5. This is definitely a cluster $&@# and not what any of us saw coming. Can Sark right the ship? TBD.