Charlie Strong shows baffling lack of urgency at end of South Florida loss to Temple

Charlie Strong showed a baffling lack of urgency at the end of South Florida’s loss to Temple on Thursday night.

Strong’s Bulls were down 17-7 in the final two minutes against Temple and had just gotten the ball after the Owls went for the knockout punch but threw an incompletion on 4th-and-4 from the South Florida nine. South Florida was able to save two timeouts to aid their comeback effort.

You would think that South Florida’s offense would understand the situation and work quickly to try scoring 10 points in two minutes to tie the game, but they had other ideas.

The Bulls worked slowly as if the situation were no different from say the middle of the second quarter. They also inexplicably did not use any of their timeouts. They ended up turning things over on downs with 38 seconds left.

South Florida’s stunningly bad clock management left ESPN’s announcers incredulous. Commentator Pat McAfee, who kept pointing out that South Florida had timeouts to use, blurted, “what the hell just happened?”

That’s a BOLD strategy Cotton.. #ESPNCFBThursday pic.twitter.com/bANE5uyhLv

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) November 8, 2019

Great question, Pat. We’re wondering the same thing.

South Florida is now 4-5 after the defeat. We’d say we were surprised by Strong’s coaching, but this isn’t the first time his decisions left us wondering what he was thinking.

After the game, Strong was asked why he didn’t use the timeouts. He seemed to indicate he thought the game was already over.