I believe the defense played a much better game tonight. They did a decent job against the run, and played well against pass as well. Yes there were some break downs, there always will be when you play a PAC 10 team, but over all a good performance. The team should be commended for there play on the defensive side of the ball.
On offense, I got what I expected other than Knickrelm thinking he is fast enough to sit back and look for openings. Get going boy, the linebackers on a PAC 10 team run way to fast to think your going to have time for looking around. There is more to playing QB than throwing the ball a long ways and running around back there. The first and foremost thing the QB has to be able to do is make the pre-snap reads which tell him which recieve is most likely to be open and where to look for the rush from. What you saw from Blum is a guy who does not make good reads, thus he throws the ball late, cannot get the ball off to the the hot read on time because he has to wait for the kid to come into his view before throwing. He needs to know who is hot before the ball is snapped and throw the ball based on his read. Thus the reason Hill looked sharper than Blum. Hill makes his read and throws the ball according to that read. Will this make you perfect every time, no it will not. What is does is give you an opportunity to control the ball and move it down the field against tough competion. While I have not watched as many practices this year as usual, I have attended some. Blum played the same in the game as I have seen in practice; inconsistent reads, poor decisions, missed recievers. Hill played the same too; consistent reads, for the most part good decisions, accurate as always. Hill outplayed Blum all through practice and again last night. As a friend of mine told me; ."'It is east to be number two, lets see how he handles number one now." I believe we have our answer.