Alex Golesh coaches USF football with swagger and expects his team to play that way

It’s easy to size up USF’s opening opponent in Saturday’s season opener and assume the Bulls will blow out Bethune-Cookman University. Seriously, this game has “obliteration” written all over it.

The Fan Duel betting site has USF favored by 40.5 points in that game – that’s a massive number. Even so, most Bulls fans would probably agree. Remember, USF’s last game was a 45-0 win over Syracuse in the Boca Raton Bowl, and on paper --- oh, that word, paper – the Bulls look better, deeper, faster, and stronger than last year.

Forget who the opponent is, though, and enjoy the game for what it is. Football is back.

‘We're just actually getting to play a real game this week, which is awesome,” head coach Alex Golesh said.

Golesh coaches with a swagger and expects his team to play that way. The season's first game can be tricky – we’re looking at you, Florida State – but it’s inconceivable that the Bulls won’t be fully prepared.

And as far as expectations go, Golesh approaches those with swagger, too.

"I think you earned the right to expect to win with what your week looks like. You earn the right in week one. You earn the right to expect to win by what camp looked like and what the summer looked like. The outside expectations are certainly raised," he said.

"We've talked about that a bunch, and our guys understand that it hasn't affected us or how we go about our business."

Just listen to Golesh talk about his team’s preparation.

“I thought they were as intentional as they have been. You could tell they're giddy about getting to play somebody else,” he said. “The challenge to us as a football team, really, as a program, is to be worried about today and nothing else. And that's what the challenge was this morning to them, from the team meeting to after practice -- just worry about today.”

Golesh loves putting his team in unscheduled situations in practice to see how the players handle the unexpected.

“We had the mock game (last) Saturday, every situation that could come up, little scenarios. You watch football. Week One. Week two, you see, see pre-snap penalties that are totally preventable,” he said.

“That's my biggest fear; it is looking silly not snapping the ball after a kickoff return and taking a delay of game (penalty). Too many people on the field, not enough people on the field. You see those things. You learn from other people's mistakes, and you hope they're not your mistakes.”

Bethune-Cookman is coached by former USF assistant head coach Raymond Woodie, who is in the second year of a major rebuild there. It won’t happen quickly. The Wildcats won only three games last year, and the prospects for this season don’t seem much better. They were fifth out of six teams in the SWAC East preseason poll.

Still, only a couple of years ago, USF was the team everyone wanted to schedule for homecoming. Golesh and his staff have done a marvelous job of turning things around in an electrifyingly short time, but the Bulls aren’t a finished product.

Not yet, anyway.

As he enters his second year, though, Golesh has many more answers than questions compared to a year ago.

“I've been in the stadium now, so way different. You feel like you know your roster. You feel like you know your team. You feel like you know where you have advantages. You feel like you know where your holes are. You feel like you know what you're going to get out of the guys, at least a lot closer,” he said.

“Now we still have 40-some new guys, so a quarter or a third of the roster is still new. So you don't know what you'll get out of those guys completely, but you certainly feel you know what you have going in. You know, guys' mindset going in, and so do they, and so do the players.”