*Missouri still hasn’t proved it’s ready for the big time. Much was made coming into the season of the Mizzou’s newfound defensive strength. Juice Williams throwing all over the Tigers’ supposedly stellar secondary belied a different truth. The Missouri defense certainly came up with clutch plays when called upon, but there was nothing on display in St. Louis to make observers think the Tiger defense is anything special. The D is going to have to stiffen up if coach Gary Pinkel refuses to alter his offensive philosophy. The Tigers’ inability to put the Illini exemplified the biggest weakness of an otherwise potent offensive attack. Mizzou’s spread is designed for big plays and a fast tempo. It works well until you’re trying to salt away a tight game in the fourth quarter. For evidence, look no farther than the Tigers’ fourth down attempt late in last night’s game, a shotgun draw play Illinois stuffed with ease.
Archive for August, 2008
Saturday’s Stories: Week One
August 31, 2008OU in Review: Chattanooga
August 31, 2008Saturday night’s matchup with the Moccasins proved to be every bit the titanic mismatch it was billed to be. From the opening kick, it was clear the Mocs were completely outmanned against the Sooners.
Pistols Backfiring
August 30, 2008A few more observations from the day’s action so far:
Buckeye Blow
August 30, 2008The big story early today is Beanie Wells’ injury for Ohio State. Obviously nobody knows anything at this point, but the footage of Wells being helped off after the injury didn’t look good–possibly the dreaded high ankle sprain.
Let’s Get It On!
August 30, 2008
The games on Thursday and Friday night provided nice appetizers, but we’re finally on to the main course. A few random thoughts as the season finally kicks off in earnest:
2008 Oklahoma Season Preview: Forecast
August 29, 2008
Hope always springs eternal in preseason practice, but it’s never fun for fans to enter a college football season feeling the questions left to be answered about their teams outnumber the rock-solid certainties. So please pardon this Sooner fan for feeling a little uneasy about kicking off 2008.
Can Sam Bradford match his debut season? Will a re-tooled secondary be able to prevent the big play? Who’s going to step up at linebacker? Is DeMarco Murray healthy? Is the OU o-line really all it’s hyped up to be?
There’s more to it than that, though, and it’s harder to explain. It’s tough to shake the memories of chances missed and unlucky breaks and off-field distractions that have seemed to loom over OU’s program lately. From above-the-law boneheads to gallingly incompetent officiating to freak injuries, recent seasons have perpetuated a paranoia that the other shoe is always about to drop.
Funny, though: The worst that has happened since OU won its last national championship in 2000? An 8-4 finish that included a bowl victory over a top-five opponent.
Yes, the Sooners have been unable to seal the deal on another national crown. The fact of the matter remains, though, that OU has been knocking on the door ever since, and there’s little reason to think that’s going to change anytime soon. Hang around long enough, and the Sooners will break through again at some point.
2008 Oklahoma Season Preview: Receivers
August 29, 2008For a conference being touted this season for its explosive offenses and quarterbacking, doesn’t it seem like the Big XII is lacking quality receivers?
There’s Michael Crabtree at Texas Tech. I guess Maclin counts as a receiver, although he seems to fit that Percy Harvin mold of being an athletic “all-purpose” guy.
Who’s next? After that, I’d say you’d have to put Juaquin Iglesias in the third slot, but it’s a pretty uninspiring choice. Like most of the other options out there, Iglesias strikes me as a solid receiver who’s not elite, but he’s not bad either. I guess this would make him “good.”
Then again, to his credit, Iglesias has shown marked improvement in every season since 2005. He ended up outshining celebrated teammate Malcom Kelly last year, leading the team with 68 catches and 900 yards. Throw in five TDs and 13 yards per catch, and it’s a pretty nice little season.
However, Iglesias’ 2007 campaign still seemed so unspectacular. Why? He rolled up 400 yards in early games against North Texas, Utah State and Tulsa–not exactly world-beaters. Following a 99-yard performance in the Red River Shootout, Iglesias put up relatively pedestrian numbers for the remainder of the season, which constituted the meat of the Big XII slate. So it’s a bit of a stretch to say that Iglesias is headed for true stardom this year.
Iglesias will be joined on the outside by Tulsa’s own Quentin Chaney. At 6’5″, the senior Chaney has shown tantalizing potential and one major flash of brilliance in last season’s Fiesta Bowl. The former Booker T. Washington Hornet was brilliant filling in for Kelly, catching four balls for 130 yards and a TD. It’s ironic that Chaney was pretty much the only Sooner to show up for a BCS game after an allegedly disinterested career up to that point. Hopefully whatever it was that got Chaney going in Glendale will continue this season. Assuming it’s legal.
Veteran Manuel Johnson will line up inside at the slot receiver spot. Much like Iglesias, Johnson has proven to be a dependable presence at receiver. Although he hasn’t shown a knack for the spectacular, he makes the catches he should make. That’s a compliment.
The most exciting new talent among the WR corps has to be redshirt freshman Ryan Broyles. Broyles probaby would have been in the mix last year had it not have been for a gas-stealing fiasco right before the season started. Since the spring, coaches and players have raved about Broyles’ catch-and-run potential out of the slot. Getting Broyles out on the field should give OU some electricity that his other compatriots lack.
For Homerism’s money, the best tight end in the country can be found in Norman. Junior Jermaine Gresham was a flat-out beast in the red zone last year, snagging 11 touchdowns. Gresham’s combination of size and speed enable offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson to line him up tight or split him out wide. It will be interesting to see if Gresham will called upon more when OU’s not inside the opponent’s 20. Sooner fans should enjoy what I think will be Gresham’s last year in school. Wilson should take advantage of it, too.
Picks Trying Not to Suck: Week One
August 27, 2008Advice: If you’re considering picking up this month’s copy of Playboy, save your $6.99. Super hot Anna Farris adorns the cover. Sounds good, right? As long as you don’t mind the fact that she doesn’t show any “skin” in the mag. Give Skinny some love!
(Bonus) Advice: For those of you who have yet to participate in your fantasy draft, steer clear of “stockpiling talent regardless of position.” Afterwards, every owner is out to prove he’s a master negotiator. You won’t be able to make trades unless you are willing to give up a lot of value.
Tennessee (-7) at UCLA
Syracuse at Northwestern (-12)
Skin Says: Northwestern by 24. Pop the Vuevue in Evanston!
Wake Forest (-12) @ Baylor
LGS: Temple (-7) at Army
Oklahoma State (-7) at Washington State
Alabama @ Clemson (-5)
*Atlanta
Two of the more intriguing teams in the country meeting opening week makes for one of the year’s most intriguing games. Looking at Clemson’s talented backfield, it easy to see why the Tigers seem to be everyone’s ACC favorite this year. But do you really want to go with Tommy Bowden over Nick Saban in a primetime game? On the other hand, last year proved that Saban is no miracle worker, especially without his own players. The Crimson Tide coach is still stuck with holdovers from the Shula reign this year, making it difficult to get a good handle on this team. I’m betting that an exuberant Bama nation is out in force at the Georgia Dome, and the major coaching edge tips this one to the Tide. Let’s open the picks with an upset.
Homerism Says: Bama by 8.
Experience: Something to Build On?
August 27, 2008Heading into the 2007 season, the college football writers who vote in the weekly Associated Press Top 25 Poll deemed UCLA the fourteenth-best team in the country, just behind Georgia and just ahead of Tennessee.
Let’s check the resume:
• 2006 Record: 7-6, including home wins over Rice, Utah, Stanford and Arizona;
• Offense: 63rd in rushing, 56th in passing, 71st overall in 2006;
• Defense: 9th in rushing, 87th in passing, 35th overall in 2006.
OK, the offense was sub-par, but the defense was pretty good. There must have been something else generating the Bruin enthusiasm, besides a win over USC the year before… There it is:
• Returning starters: 10 offense, 10 defense, 20 total.
One of the Bruins’ most vocal supporters during the offseason was Sporting News college football writer Matt Hayes, who hedged his obligatory USC-LSU championship game pick with reminders that nine different schools had won the BCS national championship in the past nine years, all the while singing UCLA’s praises.
“The Bruins have 20 starters returning from a team that found itself late last season, holding mighty USC to nine points in the season finale and keeping the Trojans from the national title game,” Hayes wrote. Hayes dismissed the Emerald Bowl blowout loss at the hands of Florida State as a mere “aberration,” which must have been different from the five other 2006 losses.
What did all that experience get head coach Karl Dorrell at the end of 2007? A 6-7 record and a pink slip.
The returning starters theory in college football is nothing new. In a sport where stud recruits likely have a career window of three years, experience is the optimistic fan’s favorite cure-all for the lingering hangover of a disappointing season. For handicappers and pundits, that extra ingredient can transform a bad team into a good one or a good team into a great one.
It actually sounds pretty convincing. Unfortunately for hopeful fans, recent data don’t necessarily bear that out.
And The Numbers Say?
To construct useful measures of the link between returning starters and success, I culled information from all teams in the six BCS conferences, dating back to 2002. (The total number of teams came to 380.) I included returning starters broken down by offense and defense. Additionally, I collected data on the previous season’s winning percentage.
As a baseline, the average team during this period returned 13.23 starters, 6.50 on defense and 6.72 on offense. The average record was 7-5.
I arrived at a few conclusions:
*How your team did last year says a lot more about what you’ll do this year than how many guys you bring back.
For the six BCS conferences, the numbers reveal a correlation close to zero, 0.01, between returning starters and teams’ winning percentage. Not surprisingly, the only variable considered among the general population of teams that shows a strong relationship to performance is the previous year’s winning percentage, which has a positive correlation of 0.60. The numbers also suggest a relatively weak link of 0.20 between the number of returning starters and the change in wins from year to year.
*If you think your team has a shot at competing for a national title, don’t worry too much about having boatloads of playing time in previous seasons.
I drilled down to the top 10 percent of teams by winning percentage in the six-year period in an effort to see if winning teams had more experience. Just like the general population, nothing really stands out among the best teams, as the correlation of returning starters to winning percentage is 0.01.
Notably, the top 10 percent of BCS teams in terms of winning percentage have had an average of 13.05 returning starters: 6.55 on offense and 6.50 on defense. Those figures are equal to or less than all three measures for all BCS teams during the period.
If you’re looking for further proof that experience is meaningless to elite teams, consider the particulars of this group. Four teams had 17 returning starters, the highest number of returnees–2007 USC, 2005 Penn St., 2006 Louisville and 2003 Ohio St. None won a national championship.
The Buckeyes’ case is particularly notable, in that the 2003 squad had six more returnees than the prior year’s national championship team, yet failed to defend their crown. In contrast, the 2004 USC Trojans, arguably the best team of all time, returned just nine starters from the previous season, the lowest of any team among the group.
So the 18 starters Ohio St. and Texas Tech bring back aren’t too significant. On the other hand, USC’s not out of it with just 11.
*Really bad teams can’t blame their lack of experience. But they might be able to blame a wealth of it.
The bottom 10 percent of teams by winning percentage—a group of 41 teams—show negative correlations of 0.19 and 0.16 between returning starters and wins and returning starters and winning percentage, respectively. This has two implications for the worst BCS conference teams. First, the relatively low correlation indicates a weak relationship between returnees and poor performance. More importantly, the fact that these correlations are negative means the data suggests that wins tend to go down among this group as more starters return. This suggests bad teams are hurt to some extent by not turning over their roster the next year.
Duke, this means you’re not out of the woods, even with the 17 guys you’re bringing back. Same goes for you, Stanford.
Turning It Around
What about the teams that improved the most from one season to the next? Somewhat stronger relationships are evident among this group.
The top 10 percent of teams in terms of increased wins gained between four and seven victories between seasons. These teams have a higher correlation, 0.36, than the general population when it comes to the relationship between returning starters and difference in wins. Also, a very strong relationship—0.85—can be found between the previous year and the following year’s winning percentage.
Given the strong correlation between winning percentage in the two years, I tried to build a profile of the most improved teams by working backwards using the data I had collected. I realize this is pretty much statistical alchemy at this point, but whatever.
First, these teams returned a higher average number of starters than the general population: 13.88, with 6.76 on offense and 7.13 on defense. The group had an average of 4.76 wins the previous year, climbing up to 9.49 the following year, with average winning percentage moving up from 0.40 to 0.73.
Then, I created a statistic for this cohort that incorporated both experience and past performance, “history,” which proved to have a correlation of 0.90 to the current season’s winning percentage. History consists of returnees as a percentage of total starters plus three times the previous year’s winning percentage:
Making The Leap
So here’s the profile of the average team among this group:
• History = 2.04
• Previous Year’s Wins = 4.76
• Previous Year’s Winning Percentage = 0.40
• Following Year’s Wins = 9.49
• Following Year’s Winning Percentage = 0.73
• Difference in Wins = 4.73
• Total Returning Starters = 13.88
• Offensive Returning Starters = 6.76
• Defensive Returning Starters = 7.13
Who fits the profile to be a high-riser this year? Here are five teams to think about:
Colorado
• History = 2.02
• Previous Year’s Wins = 6
• Previous Year’s Winning Percentage = 0.46
• Total Returning Starters = 14
• Offensive Returning Starters = 6
• Defensive Returning Starters = 8
Maryland
• History = 2.02
• Previous Year’s Wins = 6
• Previous Year’s Winning Percentage = 0.46
• Total Returning Starters = 14
• Offensive Returning Starters = 9
• Defensive Returning Starters = 5
Louisville
• History = 2.09
• Previous Year’s Wins = 6
• Previous Year’s Winning Percentage = 0.50
• Total Returning Starters = 13
• Offensive Returning Starters = 5
• Defensive Returning Starters = 8
Pittsburgh
• History = 1.93
• Previous Year’s Wins = 5
• Previous Year’s Winning Percentage = 0.42
• Total Returning Starters = 15
• Offensive Returning Starters = 8
• Defensive Returning Starters = 7
Northwestern
• History = 2.14
• Previous Year’s Wins = 6
• Previous Year’s Winning Percentage = 0.50
• Total Returning Starters = 14
• Offensive Returning Starters = 7
• Defensive Returning Starters = 7
Of this group, Northwestern looks pretty intriguing. The Wildcats face an in-conference schedule in which the road games are imminently winnable. Likewise, the non-conference slate looks an almost assured 4-0 start: Syracuse, at Duke, Southern Illinois, Ohio.
The same goes for Maryland. The Terrapins get Wake Forest and Florida State at home during the ACC schedule. Out of conference looks manageable as well: Delaware, at Middle Tennessee, Cal and Eastern Michigan.
Major Upset at The Herbies!
August 26, 2008Kirk Herbstreit’s eighth annual “Herbie Awards” are out, and they feature a stunning omission. College football’s resident heartthrob has bagged the “prettiest coeds” category in this year’s version.