We had a disappointing week going 3-5 on our recommended plays, and even more disappointing than the 5 losses was our analysis appeared to be off in 3 of the 5 (meaning at best we could have expected a 5-3 or 4-4 week). That will happen from time to time, but doesn’t leave us with a good taste in our mouth. As frustrating as the bad luck is, we can accept that as we don’t have much control over that, but the games where we were just wrong on are really tough to take. We are now 24-24-1 this year and 239-142-8 lifetime.
Our two highest rated plays (#2) Oregon and Indiana won, and our free/Other plays where 4-1 so on a whole it appears were ok, just a little off in our filter. The good news is that is correctable, and given the disproportionate percentage of bad luck: good luck games we’ve endured this year (we are now 1-11-1 in good luck/bad luck games), we are still producing a high percentage of accurate analysis (we been correct in 36 out of 49 games 74% of the time) which given a normal distribution of good luck and bad luck should yield a record close to 30-19 (61%).
ULM – UK
ULM outgains UK 377-330 (we called for a slight UK edge of 362-349), and were pretty accurate in our call for 33 from UK (they had 36). I am still scratching my head as to how ULM manages only 13 points despite the similar production to UK and what we projected. The below is what happened,
Legitimate ULM Scoring Drives ended with no points
Q1 – TO on downs at the UK 10 after a 10 play sustained drive
Q2 – End of the half, ULM moves it down to the UK 4, and misses a could Endzone shots and mismanages the clock to not even get a FG attempt
Q3- ULM misses a FG attempt after stalling a drive at the UK 16
Q4 – two meaningful INTs in UK territory (UK 37 & 36). They threw another INT to end the game, but wasn’t meaningful at that point.
That is a 3 drives in the redzone that equated to 0 points. The most you would expext is 21, the least 9. Give them 1 TD and 2 FGs, and that is 13 points left on the field (not including the 2 Q4 INTs) and this game ends 36-26 (we called for 33-26, which if you consider the impact of the Punt Return for a TD for UK, means this should have been closer to a 29-26 game). A loss is a loss, but I am not sure how I could have expected the above to occur, and am pretty confident as skewed as the final score was, we were on the right side in this game.
UAB – Marshall
When I first looked at this score I just assumed we were off in our analysis, than I looked at the box score and drive logs (something I’d recommend everyone do every week to determine for themselves where they were correct in their analysis and got unlucky or incorrect in their analysis and got lucky).
UAB outgained Marshall 7.1 yppl-5.9 yppl, and was only outgained in total yards 450-432. UAB had 3 drives end on downs in scoring territory (inside the Marshall 35), and was penalized for 135 yards, which is nearly unheard of (average per game is in the 30-50 yards range depending on the teams (even the most penalized teams LY averaged only 75ypg in penalties).
I am still not sure how you can compile 432 yards @ 7.1 yppl and manage just 7 points. As a comparison, one of our Recommended play Oregon, totaled 416 yards @ 6.7 yppl and racked up 42 points, or a couple others not quite as similar: Idaho 494 @ 8.1 yppl = 45 points or Cincinnati (Free play) 468 @ 8.2= 41 points).
