We’ll it was bound to happen, we suffered our 1st losing week of the season, but all in all even a 3-4 weekend could have been much better. Here are the games we lost (the Ws on ULL, Rice, and TCU were all pretty straight forward), an L is an L, but for those of you who couldn’t watch the games below review for yourself and form your own opinion about what could have been.
1. Tulsa -7
Tulsa outgained Arkansas 528-435 (6.6 yppl to 6.3 yppl) and we were ultimately doomed by a 3-1 TO margin (2 of which were inside the Ark 30 so effectively took Tulsa points off the board) and a KO return for a TD by Arkansas. Those things could have been as much of a 21 point swing (2 Tulsa TDs + Ark TD) and were conservatively a 13 point swing (2 Tulsa FGs plus Ark TD). Our projections called for 548 yards for Tulsa and 395 for Arkansas, so we were actually very close in our assessment, and consider we called for 25 from Arkansas, which if you take away the fluke KO return for a TD we were all over (30-7=23). Only 23 points (Tulsa) on over 500 yards is hard to fathom, particularly given their average of 55.6 points this season on only 80 less yards than they had today. Such is life, but I still think we were definitely on the right side here, despite the results.
2. Kent State +7
Kent outgained Bowling Green 478 – 461 yards, it obviously wasn’t a closely followed contest, so details of the game are a little tough to discern, but on the surface it doesn’t look too bad as the dog did outgain the home team just as we predicted.
3. Nebraska +21.5
It is a pretty tough way to start a game when 3 of your 1st 5 plays are turnovers all in your territory and 2 that set OU up inside the 20, and all lead to TDs. Throw in another fumble on your own 18 in the 3rd quarter and you’ve gift wrapped nearly 50% of OUs points. Despite all that we were actually relatively close on our projections (OU:494 @6.8 yppl to Neb: 434 @5.9) as OU outgained Neb 508 (7.3 yypl) – 418 (6.3 yppl). OU obviously took their foot off the gas given how the game played out so it is a little difficult to assess where we actually were on this game, but I do think it was closer than the score indicated, even if you only take away the 3 TOs that led to TDs that Neb gave OU inside their own 20 (accounted for 21 points on only 46 yards total offense).
4. Kansas State +9
Sort of the same story as Neb, KSU turned the ball over 6 times, which led directly to 28 KU points (and we were actually lucky it wasn’t any worse than that)
1st –INT inside KU territory at 42, led to KU TD
2nd – Fumble at the KU 1 (KU actually recovered in the endzone for touchback) – led to KU TD (really a 14 point swing)
3rd – Fumble – set KU up on KSU 30 (KU missed a FG)
4th – KSU goes for it on 4th & 1 at their own 28 and doesn’t convert, gives ball to KU on a 28 yards field
5th – KSU again goes for it on 4th & 1 at their own 29 and doesn’t convert, gives ball to KU on 29 yard field (led to KU TD)
6th – INT on KSU 14 gives KU ball in the redzone (led to KU TD)
KSU ended up with 355 yards (4.9 yppl) total offense compared to 469 yards (7.1 yppl), which was pretty close to what we had for KU (462) but not so much on KSU (416). Again with this much disruption via TOs it is hard to determine where we really were on this game, but nevertheless gift wrapping 28 of their 52 points certainly wasn’t what anyone contemplated
Look, we are not in the business of making excuses, we lost 4. We are in the business of critically analyzing both our Ws and Ls to constantly monitor whether we are on point with our analysis or if we are not regardless of whether it is ultimately a W or L.
We are now 43-17 on the season, which is pretty damn impressive, and even in a week where we got about as many bad breaks as possible, we still managed a 3-4 record.
Sunday Night Game:
We’ve been monitoring the ECU-UCF game all week, and early in the week at -2 to -3 it looked like a pretty decent play, as we’ve got ECU winning 26-16; however, that is on the low end of our model projections for UCF (16-19), so at -5 we are eroding too much line value and don’t have the coverage percentage we need to justify a recommended play. We’ve been waiting, hoping the line will come down, but as of this morning it is still at 5 at www.betus.com , so we will officially pass.
Our math does call for only 224 yards for UCF (3.5 yppl) which is extremely low for a 16-19 point total, so presuming my math is correct, there appears to be a good chance UCF doesn’t get to 10 points. The same is true of ECU, as we project 330 yards offense (5.0 yppl) which is on the low side of a 26 point day (although in the ballpark). UCF is also getting outscored by an average margin of 22.6 pts in their 5 SU losses this season, so laying 5 may not matter, still I don’t want to chase and I think while there is some pretty decent value with ECU I’ll pass and wait for 50 new games to start looking at next week.
