Dude, if youre gonna base improvement or not on one game at the end of the season, then yes, you are right. But....
63-38 L, then
W
W
W
W
W
W.
We improved, at times greatly, but then just took a giant step back.
Playing 4 competitive quarter with Georgia-would you call that an improvement from the CCG or just the same?
In most of those Ws, we were still absurdly turnover prone, and played pretty bad defense. Same exact things that hurt us against UCLA and Ohio State. In what areas did we really improve? We were exposed by every capable offense we played, and even made bad offenses look better than they were.
Just because we won those games doesn't mean we improved during the course of the season. They were mostly bad teams. Our 3 competitive quarters were mostly because Beck threw in a few new wrinkles I thought (that shovel pass worked great, for instance). But still, turnovers and bad defense, the same things that plagued us all year were too much to overcome.