Jeff Scott addresses officiating following loss to Florida

The South Florida Bulls had the No. 18 Florida Gators on the ropes Saturday night in The Swamp. With a missed 49-yard field goal, USF came up just short in a 31-28 loss. However, with the game featuring some critical officiating moments, naturally, the head coach was asked for his opinion on those calls.

During his postgame press conference, Scott was asked about the officiating following the loss to Florida.

CLICK HERE to subscribe for FREE to the On3 YouTube channel

“I don’t think we have the SEC money to pay the SEC fines, so I’ll be careful with my comments. I watched everything that happened. And it was a big third down stop and it was going to be fourth and eighth. They were going to have to kick a field goal and two guys tied up there and they both went to the ground,” Scott began. “And the official said he saw something more that nobody else saw and I was disappointed in that and obviously, we had a chance to stop them.

“They scored on I believe maybe the next play and so that was disappointing. I felt like we also had a pass interference late in the game on our sideline and he threw the flag as soon as their guy ran into our guy trying to catch the ball. And then they came back and said it was an offensive pass interference. So yeah, that was disappointing. But, we overcame a lot of those penalties even with that, so I guess that’s how I would really respond is our guy’s resilience and not getting frustrated and still with all that we still had opportunities there late in the game to be able to win the game.”

The Bulls did a lot of things right in the near in-state upset. They rushed for 286 yards and three touchdowns on the Gator defense. That dominance in the run game helped them win the time of possession battle as well. Even so, they were called for nine penalties over the course of the game for a total of 73 yards.

Scott may not be happy about the calls, but the Bulls made some mistakes of their own to cost themselves the win. Gerry Bohanon threw two picks, including a pick-six, as part of three turnovers, they only capitalized on one of Anthony Richardson’s two interceptions, and they gave up 217 rush yards of their own.

Regardless, Scott does not sound content with the way things worked out in Gainesville this weekend. That doesn’t mean he’ll say any more about it, though, if for no other reason than to not sacrifice any of the money owed to him on the two-year extension he signed in January.

Billy Napier credits Jeff Scott, USF after Florida dodges upset bid

Florida flirted with disaster on Saturday, barely escaping from South Florida. The Bulls had a last-second opportunity to tie the game with a field goal but due to a bad snap, it missed wide. Head coach Billy Napier now has his second win in Gainesville but just barely.

During his post-game interview on the field, Napier was asked what he learned about his team. He rattled off a few things but wanted to credit USF and how they played under head coach Jeff Scott. Napier credited their off-season additions and how good a team they had.

“Some of the same things we learned the last couple of weeks,” Napier said. We got fight in us. We got the intangibles. This group responds. We need to execute better, we need to do the simple things better. We made it hard tonight. But credit to South Florida. Jeff and his team, Year Three. They continue to add some really good players in the offseason. Lot of respect for South Florida and how hard they played. We got the win tonight but we got a lot of things to focus on and improve.”