Quinton Flowers continues to show he is catalyst for USF offense

TAMPA

The White beat the Green 32-19.

What does it mean?

In pure numbers not much of anything. University of South Florida head football coach Willie Taggart saw his offense play against his defense so every moment of joy was filled with a little frustration.

But the one thing Taggart can take from Saturday's USF spring game is that it's nice to have Quinton Flowers at quarterback.

But we all knew that.

The rising junior proved last year he can put up points and showed that USF can expect the same if not more in 2016. He has two-time first-team American Athletic Conference running back Marlon Mack and the deepest corps of receiv

ers the Bulls have seen in more than a decade.

Expectations are high for 2016. There is even talk about a top 25 preseason ranking.

"We are in uncharted waters now because we've never been in a position where people are patting us on the back," Taggart said. "Every year we heard how bad we were. Now everyone expects big things. We haven't accomplished anything, but we are not going to run away from it."

Flowers is a weapon, who is now surrounded by more weapons. But the Bulls haven't accomplished anything Taggart reminds us.

Remember the bus ride he was going to take us on. No more buses, just Flowers' legs and magician-like moves, and a receiving corps that has legitimate speed to go after anything.

Taggart knows how important a receiving corps can be to a quarterback's confidence even a dual threat like himself who won a state title at Manatee and earned All-American honors at Western Kentucky.

"Our coaches did a great job of recruiting and then coaching them up and the beauty of it is they (receivers) are so young," Taggart said. "It means so much to a quarterback and the running backs. Our receivers will take more than one guy to cover so that is going to open things up for our backs."

But nobody is going to give the Bulls anything Taggart reminds us again.

Ray Woodie, USF's new defensive coordinator. was given the task of stopping the Bulls' high-powered offense. The former Palmetto and Bayshore head coach replaces Tom Allen, who was given a lot of credit for USF's 8-5 turnaround last season that marked Taggart's first winning season in his three years with the Bulls.

"It's good pressure," he said. "Football is a game that I love and this game was just like practice. I was proud of the guys on both sides of the ball based on what we did and taught them."

The White team had Flowers while the Green team had heralded UCLA transfer quarterback Asiantii Woulard and most of USF's key weapons in Mack and receiver Rodney Adams.

"We don't play the University of South Florida so we don't have to worry about that offense," Woodie said. "As a team we showed improvement and our defense improved from where we started this spring."

Auggie Sanchez looked like his old self. The junior linebacker intercepted two passes and had four tackles. The standout on defense for Woodie's Green team was sophomore safety Khalid McGee, who had a game high 10 tackles. Jaymon Thomas and Ronnie Hoggins each had an interception.

Taggart wanted to see improvement on his red zone defense. It wasn't quite there, but then the Bulls offense is pretty potent.

"Red zone defense is something we were bad at last year and we talked about it this spring," Taggart said. "Nowadays teams are going to move the ball and put up yardage, but you've got to keep them out of the end zone. We can't give up big plays like we did on the deep balls down the field. You can't give up explosive plays, but on the flip side I liked it offensively."

Alan Dell, Herald sports columnist/writer, can be reached at 941-745-7056. Follow him on Twitter @ADellSports

This story was originally published April 16, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Quinton Flowers continues to show he is catalyst for USF offense ."