THE SCOOP
The injury bug, which has bitten several SEC teams like Georgia and Florida hard, has finally struck in a significant way at Alabama.
Junior safety Vinnie Sunseri, a key to the Crimson Tide secondary, will miss the remainder of the season with a torn ligament in his left knee. He will have surgery Tuesday.
Sunseri went down with the injury on kickoff coverage in the first quarter of the Tide’s 52-0 victory against Arkansas on Saturday. He went to the locker room, returned in street clothes without crutches and received hugs from his teammates.
Through seven games, Sunseri was seventh on the team with 20 total tackles, including a tackle for loss. He had two interceptions, both of which he returned for touchdowns. He was much more important as a coach on the field who made the secondary defensive calls and as a team leader.
“Vinnie’s done a great job for us. He’s an outstanding player and really good person, good leader,” coach Nick Saban said. “Can’t say enough about the job he’s done throughout this year and his career. Always hate it when guys get injured. It’s a tough part of the game.”
ON THE CUSP
LSU freshman Anthony Jennings of Marietta High will likely play this weekend against FCS opponent Furman. “Our second team quarterback is always that guy that’s in position to play and play a lot of football should something happen,” LSU coach Les Miles said Monday. “And we would like to see Anthony Jennings specifically, not the second team because we think the second team will be watching most of the day. But we would expect that Anthony Jennings would want to see some action and we’d like to have him see some action in this game. Do we want to develop him? You betcha. Do we want him on the field? You betcha.”
ABOUT ODDS
The NCAA hates this kind of talk, but if you had bet $100 on the the five SEC teams that were underdogs by less than four touchdowns to win on Saturday (Missouri, Vanderbilt, Tennessee, Mississippi and Auburn), it would have been a payday of more than $63,000.
SECOND GUESSES
Count South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier among the biggest second-guessers of … Steve Spurrier.
“I couldn’t sleep hardly a bit last night,” Spurrier said Sunday. He questioned his play-calling down the stretch of the loss to Tennessee, when he opted to punt on a fourth-and-2 from the USC 26, guarding a one-point lead with 2:55 to play. He acknowledged he would’ve gone for it if his offense needed one yard instead of two. Spurrier used two timeouts considering the decision before punting. UT drove 63 yards to the Gamecocks’ 2-yard line for the winning field goal as time expired.
BY THE NUMBERS
287
Receiving yards by sophomore receiver Mike Evans, a Texas A&M school record, breaking his previous mark of 279 set against Alabama earlier this season. The 287 yards is third-best in SEC history behind Arkansas’ Cobi Hamilton (303 yards versus Rutgers in 2002) and LSU’s Josh Reed (293 against Alabama in 2001).
Compiled by Ray Cox
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