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Willie Taggart and USF are ready for their close-up
Willie Taggart’s South Florida Bulls had Florida State right where they wanted them: tied at 7-7 going into halftime at Doak Campbell Stadium in Tallahassee last September.
It was an inspired first-half performance from the USF defense — if they could continue that kind of play in the second half and add a bit of offense, they’d be able to repeat 2009, when the Bulls beat FSU 17-7 for the school’s first win over one of Florida’s Big Three (FSU, Florida, Miami.)
The Bulls weren’t intimidated. They thought they could pull it off. What else could they believe?
Then Dalvin Cook happened.
Cook, FSU’s Heisman-contending tailback, ran for 266 yards and four touchdowns on 30 carries against USF last year, with the Seminoles scoring on all five of their second-half drives.
USF is looking for redemption for the lost opportunity a year later – Saturday, they'll host the Seminoles in Tampa.
Despite the blunt lesson dished out in the second half last year, the Bulls still have no reason to be afraid of Florida State.
The Seminoles might be coming off a swift and merciless beatdown at the hands of Lamar Jackson and the Louisville Cardinals and looking for redemption themselves, but USF is no lower-conference cupcake.
In a league — the American — that features what might be the first non-Power Five team to ever make the College Football Playoff — Houston — South Florida is flying under the radar. They’re 3-0 with impressive, while not necessarily Houston-level, double-digit wins over Northern Illinois and Syracuse so far this season.
USF and Houston will not meet this season unless it’s in the AAC Championship Game, and an upset win over Florida State for the Bulls Saturday would add a lot more juice to that possible — if not likely — matchup in December.
While the average fan would view a Bulls win Saturday as a massive upset — FSU is an established power in college football and a recent national champion, even if they are coming off an embarrassing loss — not everyone would be shocked.
Florida State is a five-point favorite Saturday. A discerning bettor would break down the stats and could come to the conclusion that USF is a better team — one due for an outright win. FOXSports' WhatIfSports simulation has USF losing by one point with a win probability of 43 percent.
Who are these guys?
Willie Taggart grew up in the Tampa Bay area and was a standout quarterback at Bradenton’s legendary Manatee High, leading the team to back-to-back state championship games. He knows the value of a Florida recruit, because he was one. Albeit an undersized and underrecruited one.
Taggart, true to his high school form, became a standout quarterback at Western Kentucky — he even had his jersey retired in Bowling Green. Taggart’s success on the field was a big reason why WKU is now an FBS school, and after working under Jack and then Jim Harbaugh, his three-year stint as the head coach at his alma mater is a big reason why WKU is arguably the best program in Conference USA today.
Taggart built WKU into the mid-major powerhouse it is by following the logical formula — recruiting Florida kids.
But since he “returned home” to USF in 2013, he’s found the competition for Florida talent a lot tougher. As Taggart puts it: "everyone is in Florida."
Taggart and his coaches compensated by going deeper into the Sunshine State than ever before, finding gems from small towns and small schools around the state. There was still talent to be mined yet.
But they had to win some recruiting battles to build a championship program. The big hump: Taggart needed to land a program-changer.
USF found that in quarterback Quinton Flowers.
Miami-Dade County produces roughly 100 Division 1-caliber football players from its prep ranks annually, and while Flowers, a standout for the middling-at-best Miami-Jackson High, flew under the radar for a while, he was hardly a secret or gem by the time National Signing Day 2014 rolled around.
Flowers boasted offers from Tennessee, Florida and Nebraska by the end of his senior season. He was also strongly recruited by Alabama, TCU, Auburn and Mississippi State.
Those schools saw Flowers’ raw but boundless athletic ability — his high school team was notoriously poor, but his 7-on-7 squad took the Florida circuit by storm — but Flowers saw how seriously Taggart took recruiting Florida and how quickly the Bulls pounced when they saw Flowers' play.
Flowers appreciated that. He’d been through a lot by the time he committed to USF in June 2013 — his father was shot in the neck and killed outside the family’s home in the notorious Liberty City neighborhood of Miami, and his mother died of cancer the year before his commitment.
USF took Flowers seriously from the start, and the quarterback returned the favor by honoring his summer commitment through his senior season.
Taggart had his man:
“It was huge for us.”
Flowers has thrown for 716 yards and seven touchdowns and rushed for 165 yards with two more scores in his first three games this season, and while they’re not Lamar Jackson numbers, they’re enough to have FSU coach Jimbo Fisher concerned about how his team is going to handle the 6-foot tall quarterback.
"We're going to have our hands full, there's no doubt,” he said.
Taggart entered this, his fourth season, not necessarily on the hot seat, but not far from it either. The Bulls ended the 2015 season on a hot streak, but the message was clear: it was going to have to be carried into 2016.
USF has done just that. Taggart isn’t one to hold back on the secret of how he and his staff made it happen:
“It was going to take a minute to get to jelling,” Taggart said. “I just stayed true to who I am and the plan I had in place."
A big part of that plan is taking the proverbial “next step.”
Saturday, one of the best teams in the nation will play USF on the Bulls’ home field. That’d be a pretty good time to do it.
