Not a single person would have blamed Joe Klanderman if Baylor had gone to Orlando, Florida, and come away with a loss. Heck, the Knights even began the week favored against the Bears . Needless to say, coach Klanderman's back was already against the wall. The Bears had dropped two straight games to TCU and Kansas and hit the big red panic button by firing Dave Aranda; it wouldn't have surprised many if the Bears continued their losing streak against a UCF team that had just beaten the A.P. No. 2 BYU Cougars.
That wasn't the case however, as Baylor entered the Bounce House and dominated the game from the start all the way through until the end. Even with an exclamation point of a Mike Allen fumble recovery as time expired. In a game that was rated as a "toss up" game that could have gone either way, the Bears scored 41 points and didn't allow UCF to score a single touchdown
During the post-game presser, Coach Klanderman put it best when he said, "...I figured if I could stay out of their way, they would take care of the work. And so that's what I tried to do, and they just went out and played their butts off."
Coach Klanderman already knew this team and what they could be capable of accomplishing. But he also knew that the energy the Bears were exuding wasn't what it needed to be, saying as much when he said that the UCF game was an example of "Baylor energy." And he was absolutely right.
Whether DJ Lagway having a fantastic performance where he threw for 319 yards and 4 touchdowns, Gavin Freeman and Caden Knighten getting their opportunities to show off how gifted of athletes that they both are through their speed, or the Bears' defense suffocating the Knights' offense with 7 SKs and 12 TFLs, Baylor is a dangerous team to play when they're in sync.
Rhett Armstrong isn't the best field goal kicker in the country, but that's not the biggest of concerns. He's got the leg strength to hit from 50+ yards, but his accuracy has been a bit shaky at times. Armstrong went 2-3 on the day, making his first two (45, 29) and missing his third (50).
However, I would take a kicker making 2-3 and adding points to the board over turning the ball over on downs as was more frequent in Dave Aranda's era. Coach Klanderman though seems to be more content to add points if the potential is there, and that's an important thing.
If Baylor can ride this momentum, they still have control over their own destiny in the Big 12. The next four games are against ISU, BYU, Texas Tech, and Houston. None of those games are going to be easy to win, but if Baylor plays the level of complementary football that they did against UCF for the rest of the season, I can no longer count the Bears automatically "out" of any of them.
Also, if coach Klanderman is going to show more willingness to kick field goals instead of going for it on 4th down, Baylor should hope to have more drives come away with points. I'm not necessarily advocating for no 4th down conversion attempts, but a chance at 3 points is always going to be more valuable than a higher chance of 0 points.
But, that's a different discussion for a different time.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/college/baylor as Two Biggest Decisions Coach Klanderman Got Right Against UCF and Why They Matter .
