Whatever Pruitt’s other shortcomings, I’ll give him this: his players seem to love playing for him. He never lost the locker room through all of the early struggles. That’s half the battle, and that’s something his predecessors (even Fulmer) never did.
Whatever happens in the bowl game, this program has momentum. I said a few weeks ago that my minimum expectation for next year was 8-4. At the time, I didn’t think that was actually realistic. Now, I won’t be shocked if we better that mark by a game or two.
I’m still not yet sold on Pruitt. But I’m closer than I’ve ever been.
I'll walk back what I said below about expecting to beat one of OU, FL, Uga or bammer (in order of increasing difficulty). I now think that's a very realistic expectation.
I am going to keep (for now) my expectations to 8-4, because we may drop one we are supposed to win also, but may reassess over the summer. 9-3 is definitely not unrealistic though. I thought it was this year, but if we bother to show up against Ga State and don't blow a coverage vs BYU we'd be there. Pretty amazing.
Having said that, we easily could also have lost to Mizzou and UK, both one-score games. UK was particularly close.