With the ‘Canes 28-27 victory over the Seminoles two weeks ago, Ken Dorsey put up many personal accolades. Most importantly, he became the first UM quarterback to defeat Florida State three times. He also completed 20-of-45 attempted passes for 362 yards, marking the sixth game in his career in which he has passed for more than 300 yards, and the second time this year. Dorsey also matched his career high in passing yards.
Last year, against FSU, Dorsey completed 14-of-27 attempts for 249 yards.
“Whenever you are coming from behind, you’re going to have to pass the ball a lot more. I don’t mind doing that. If we can throw the ball, we’re going to do that. But if we have to run the ball like 45 times, we’ll do that too,” said Dorsey, who earned Big East Player of the Week for the fifth time in his career after his FSU performance. “It was a great game…we watched the film and we’re going to take a lot away from it; we learned a lot from watching ourselves and what we did wrong. Hopefully we can prevent ourselves from being in the same situation again.”
Competing against Florida State again was a big deal for Dorsey. In the 2000 season, his game against the ‘Noles allowed him to prove his success as a quarterback; and he was able to secure his starting position at UM.
Florida States head coach, Bobby Bowden, stated, “We’ve played against all the great Miami quarterbacks – Kosar, Toretta, Testaverde – all of them. I don’t think any of them are better than Dorsey.”
Commenting on that quote after the game, Dorsey said: “Well I don’t know, ill take that with a grain of salt. All week he refuses to call me by my name and things like that, that’s what you hear from people. But at the same time, to hear that from a guy who’s played against so many different guys not only in our program, but in other programs too, it’s very flattering that he would say something like that.”
Not being able to pin point one wrong thing, that caused the game’s outcome to be known at the very end, Dorsey recognized how the team can try to correct some of the errors.
“We just made key mistakes in key situations,” said Dorsey. “We just got to try to take out those mistakes. Obviously the interceptions hurt; we could at least get the field goals there. And on run-blocking, we would just miss one little move and that would be the difference between a 3-yard gain, and a 40-yard gain.”
As the ‘Canes take the heat to defend their win, some say that they didn’t win, that FSU just lost.
“It was not a lack of effort on our behalf. They can say they should’ve won the game all they want, but the part that matters is that we made the plays when we had to, and they didn’t,” Dorsey said.
When it comes down to the end, Dorsey as well as the rest of the ‘Canes have some regrets to actions during this past match up against the ‘Noles. However they feel that what went wrong can easily be fixed.
“Well, I wouldn’t have thrown two interceptions, that is for sure. But the thing that we’re going to learn from this is basically get back to fundamentals; you know just doing the fundamental things right – throwing, catching, and blocking. And when we get that ironed out, we’ll be in great shape.”
Dorsey, not shaken by the close call, is considerably proud of his team’s ability to continue to be undefeated. He realizes that most people under estimated the match up between Miami and Florida State to just a mere in-state rivalry. Many never thought they would be a threat to the ‘Canes winning streak. More emphasis was put on the upcoming games against Tennessee and Virginia Tech.
“That was a big game for us. Every team in the course of a season has to go through games like that; those are the games that define your season. If you loose those games, you don’t have a very good season, but if you win them, the season looks promising. What we have to remember is that it was a close game, at the same time it was a game we won, and we got to keep plugging along,” said Dorsey with confidence.
Speaking for himself, and as the spokesman of his fellow teammates, Dorsey concluded, “We’re going to take one game at a time, and we are just going to try our best not to be in that situation again. The biggest thing is in the end, just do what you have to do to get the win.”
You can reach Dana Strokovsky at Hoopg1rl6@aol.com.