Category: Sports

Just a minor update. Based on the official committee rankings, South Florida would get the #12 seed instead of James Madison.

BOOO!!

I admit it. I’m openly rooting for James Madison.

You’ve already seen the rest of the post.

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Last week’s #2, undefeated Indiana, had a scare. They were losing with 40 seconds on the clock, but pushed over a last-minute TD to remain undefeated.

Indiana looks pretty safe for an undefeated regular season. Their only remaining games are against Wisconsin and Purdue, two basement dwellers in the Big Ten. They are pretty much a lock for a playoff spot even if they lose the conference championship game.

Last week’s #9 Oregon barely eked out a victory over #20 Iowa.

Last week’s #8 Texas Tech totally dominated #7, formerly undefeated BYU. BYU’s loss means that there are only three remaining undefeated teams in the FBS division, and they are ranked 1-2-3.

Last week’s #14 Virginia and #15 Louisville both lost to unranked teams. Virginia never scored a TD. Louisville took it into overtime before losing to Cal.

Last week’s #23 Washington lost to Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Badgers came into the game as the lowest-scoring team in the Fab Four conferences, at 13 points per game. Their offense was exactly that bad once again, but this time their usual 13 points was enough to defeat Washington.

Oddity of the week: Rutgers ran 69 plays from scrimmage, and 41 of them were rushes by Antwan Raymond. Assuming that football is a show as well as a sport, Antwan is now the hardest working man in show business. (He amassed 240 rushing yards, giving him exactly 1000 for the year.)

There is no especially dominant team in the very balanced ACC this year. It appears that none of their teams will make the top 12 in the rankings, so the ACC champ is likely to get the automatic #11 seed. Right now Georgia Tech, Virginia, Pittsburgh and SMU are tied for the conference lead. Their national ranks are 14, 20, 23 and NR respectively. Miami and Louisville are ranked 16 and 19 nationally, but are not currently among the conference leaders. In order to make the playoff, an ACC team would either have to win the conference championship game or make it into the top 10.

James Madison continued an underdog pursuit of that 12th playoff spot with a win over Marshall. If the regular season were now over, James Madison would be in the playoff, based on being 24th in the new AP poll! As I’ve noted before, there are only four strong conferences, but the top FIVE conference winners get an automatic bid. At the moment, James Madison is the top-rated conference leader outside the Fab Four, and would therefore get the #12 seed in the tournament. South Florida, Tulane and North Texas, co-leaders in the American Conference, are right on their heels, ranked 25, 26 and 28.

Last week’s #11 Texas, #12 Oklahoma and #13 Utah had the week off. Those three spots are crucial because they are the bubble boys. Exactly 12 teams make the playoffs. Because of exemptions for the conference champions from the ACC and one other conference to be determined, a team from the three strongest conferences must finish in the top ten to be sure of a spot. That’s also true of Notre Dame. As of this week’s AP list, Notre Dame and Texas would barely sneak in with the #9 and #10 seeds, while Oklahoma and Utah would just miss.

Overrated teams o’ the week

The current list. (Based on the new Sagarin computer ratings and this week’s AP poll.)

1. Virginia – 24 places (44,20)
2. James Madison – 17 places (41,24)
3. Georgia Tech – 16 places (30,14)
3. Cincinnati – 16 places (38,22)
5. BYU – 14 places – (26,12)

What happened to last week’s most overrated teams? They had a perfect week – no wins at all. (Based on last week’s Sagarin computer ratings and last week’s AP poll.)

1. 24 places – Memphis (46,22) – LOST to Tulane. They gave up 35 points in the first half.
2. 22 places – Virginia (34,12) – LOST; failed to score a TD against unranked Wake Forest.
3. 16 places – Georgia Tech (32,16) – Did not play.
4. 15 places – BYU (23,8) – LOST to Texas Tech; they fell behind 26-0 before scoring a meaningless TD in the fourth quarter.
5. 14 places – Cincinnati (39,25) Did not play.

Scoreboard

New rankings

New computer ratings

The committee’s first ranking isn’t very different from the AP’s.

There are only minor changes in the top 25: Memphis and Cincinnati are out; Pitt and Iowa are in. I agree with those changes. Memphis was my most overrated team of the week, and Cincinnati was also on the overrated list.

One difficulty with the list: there are no teams outside of the Fab Four except Notre Dame, which means that there’s no way to determine the fifth-highest-ranking conference champ, a team that gets an automatic spot in the playoff. (It would have been Memphis, based on the AP rankings.) I don’t know how they would resolve that. Not that it matters. Whichever team gets that spot is likely to be a sacrificial lamb at the altar of the 5th seed (currently Georgia), but at least it gives us a fun underdog to pull for.

For now, I’m assuming that Memphis would get that 12th seed. Therefore, if these were the final rankings, both Texas and Oklahoma would be out, replaced by Virginia and Memphis as the 11th and 12 seed.

I believe there will be many changes in the weeks to come. For example, BYU is currently ranked 7th, but their next three games are all tough, and they will be 10-point underdogs this week! (Similarly, Sagarin’s system favors Texas Tech by 9.) The BYU Cougars are at a fork in the road. One path proves they belong; the other banishes them from the titanic twelvesome.

Two undefeated teams, Navy and Georgia Tech, lost.

The Indiana juggernaut continued to trample the opposition with a 55-10 victory. This week’s victim was Maryland.  The Hoosiers lost their star receiver to a strained hammy, but never missed a beat. They passed North Texas to become the highest-scoring team in the nation. They are also #3 on defense, giving them an average margin of victory of 35 points. They did just as well when the QB sat down and let his little brother play. (No kidding. The freshman back-up quarterback is the brother of the starting quarterback.)

Time will tell, but at this point the “Top 25” seems like a “Top 2 and some other teams.” While the other teams climb the mountain, the Indiana Hoosiers and THE Ohio State University seem to be hovering above the clouds.

There was bit of a shake-up on the leaderboard as numbers 8, 9 and 10 and an undefeated Navy team all lost, but I can’t say that any of those losses surprised me.

#10 Miami lost in OT to unheralded SMU. From the comments: “SMU last beat a top 10 team in 1983. SMU had not beaten a top 10 team on their home field since 1974.”

#8 formerly undefeated Georgia Tech lost to unranked NC State,

#9 Vanderbilt lost to #20 Texas. I was starting to think the Longhorns had hit their stride when they took a 34-10 lead into the fourth quarter, but they did everything possible to blow the game, and probably would have if Vandy hadn’t simply run out of time. Final: 34-31.

Formerly undefeated Navy lost to North Texas, which came into the game as the highest-scoring team in the nation. Navy held North Texas to 31 points, but lost that game by failing at the one aspect of offense they are supposed to be best at: disciplined ball control. Their QB lost a fumble and threw two interceptions.

It was another woeful week for:

Pre-season #2 Penn State. They are now 0-5 in the Big 10 with Indiana up next.

Pre-season #4 Clemson. They allowed Duke to score 46 in a loss that dropped them to 3-5.

Pre-season #15 Florida, now 3-5.

Oklahoma State. They are now 0-6 in the Big 12. It was just two years ago that they beat Texas A&M in a bowl game. As the song says, then was then and now is now. They have lost 17 in a row against FBS opponents.

On the other hand, Wisconsin had their best conference week of the year – a bye.

Who’s in line for the underdog spot in the post-season tournament?

This changes constantly. If the regular season were now over, Memphis would be in the playoff! As I’ve noted before, there are only four strong conferences, but the top FIVE conference winners get an automatic bid. At the moment, Memphis is the top-rated conference leader outside the Fab Four, and would get the #12 seed in the tournament.

The computer model says James Madison is the best conference leader not in the Fab Four (??!!), by a whisker over South Florida. That sounds weird, and it’s difficult for me to imagine James Madison being competitive in the tournament, but they are also #27 in the AP poll, not far behind Memphis. Memphis has a difficult remaining schedule, but James Madison may well run the table.

Note: There are currently six one-loss teams in the American Conference (considering conference games only), so I considered all six the “conference leader” temporarily, just for the sake of this exercise. South Florida and Memphis are two of them.

Overrated teams o’ the week

Based on the difference between this week’s Sagarin computer ratings (shown first in parens) and the new AP poll, this week’s list is:.

1. 24 places – Memphis (46,22)
2. 22 places – Virginia (34,12)
3. 16 places – Georgia Tech (32,16)
4. 15 places – BYU (23,8)
5. 14 places – Cincinnati (39,25)

What happened to last week’s most overrated teams? (Based on last week’s Sagarin computer ratings and last week’s AP poll.)

1. 56 places – Navy (82,26) LOST to unranked North Texas
2. 24 places – Houston (46,22) LOST at home to 2-6 West Virginia.
3. 22 places – Virginia (37,15) WON 31-21 against Cal.
4. 15 places – Georgia Tech (23,8) LOST; allowed 48 to a team with a 1-3 conference record
5. 14 places – BYU (24,10) did not play.
5. 14 places – Cincinnati (31,17) LOST; got slaughtered by Utah. In fairness, Utah is good. Utah’s only two losses are to teams currently ranked 8th and 9th

Scoreboard

New rankings

New computer ratings

I really thought the Jays could win it with the last two in Toronto, but no dice. The Dodgers won yet another nail-biter.

Closing it out on zero days rest, Yoshinobu Yamamoto went 3-0 with a 1.02 ERA in the Fall Classic. He’s the first pitcher to notch three wins in a single World Series since the Big Unit did it for the Diamondbacks in 2001. Yamamoto and The Unit are the only two pitchers to win games 6 and 7 in the integration area. That guy was clutch, and it was needed, because Blake Snell and Ohtani stunk it up on the mound.

That’s two championships in a row for the Dodgers. I guess we don’t call them Dem Bums any more. Now it’s more like Dem MoFos.

What can ya say? It’s good to have money. Maybe it can’t buy happiness, but it can assemble a helluva ball team.

ESPN said it eloquently:

For 6 hours and 39 minutes, Game 3 of the World Series played out like a fantastical dreamscape of baseball, filled with tension and drama and madness, with happenings the game had never seen before and won’t ever see again.

The Dodgers won in 18 innings on Freddie Freeman’s walk-off homer – and that’s the sensible part! Here’s the craziness:

Little-used reliever Will Klein got the win. He pitched four innings of one-hit ball after having pitched only 15 innings all year. He was probably either going to win it or lose it, because the Dodgers were out of pitchers, except for Ohtani and Yamamoto, who had pitched a complete game two days earlier. Talk about an unlikely hero! Klein’s lifetime ERA is 5.16 in the majors, and was 5.33 in the minors and 4.86 in college.

Yamamoto’s earlier complete game didn’t seem that important at the time, but looking back on it, it was good that he gave the bullpen a rest.

Everyone has run out of superlatives to describe Shohei Ohtani. He reached base nine times. In his first four at bats, he had two homers, a ground rule double and a boring old regular double that somehow stayed in the park. The Jays finally got tired of that crap, and just walked him in all of his subsequent five at bats, the first four times intentionally, with the last time not intentional in theory. (Wink, wink! It took only four pitches, all well out of the zone.) Ohtani is just the second player in Major League history with four extra-base hits in a World Series game, and the first since 1906. He is the first player to reach base nine times in a post-season game, breaking the previous record of seven. No man had reached base nine times in any game, regular or post-season, in the integration era. Even Danny “Suits” Sparrow has to be looking down with envy at that game. ¹

I don’t know how many people made it to the end at the watch parties in Toronto, where the game stretched nearly to three in the morning.

By the end of the game, the Jays had replaced four starters for pinch runners, and those pinch runners basically had to stay in to play the equivalent length of a regular game. In essence, the Jays had to play the extra innings without their best hitters not named Vladimir. The four guys who stayed in the game after pinch-running went a combined 1-for-14 (.071), while the four players consigned to the bench had gone 6-for-15 (.400).

Footnote 1: Of course, Danny “Suits” Sparrow never got nine plate appearances in a game because an intentional walk couldn’t keep him from scoring. If you walked him intentionally, he would just steal the next three bases, thus ending the game in his first at bat in extra innings. The only defense against him was to walk the batters in front of him to clog up the bases. And even that didn’t work if there were no outs, because the two guys in front of him would take the rare “intentional caught stealing” so Danny had a clear path.

There’s a cute story behind that strategy. When I was living in Norway, my dad and my youngest son spent one summer with me. They were always looking for fun ways to pass the time when I was at work, so I re-wrote the software for the APBA computer baseball game to add Danny “Suits” Sparrow as a player, basically making him capable of a homer every at bat. When my son and my dad drafted their teams, my son got the first pick, naturally drafting Grandpa Danny. My dad therefore had to figure out how to defend against the one opponent he could not defeat – himself, as pictured in his own stories. Talk about karma! The intentional walk didn’t work since Suits would steal the next three bases, so he had to devise the double intentional walk to clog the basepaths in front of Suits. My son then countered with the intentional caught stealing with one or no outs, forcing my dad to counter with the triple intentional walk when there was already one out. It worked like a chess game, because my dad had to figure out when to start walking batters. As I noted above, there was no defense if there were no outs, because the double intentional caught stealing would leave Suits free to steal all the bases and score.

Mind you, they were playing a game with all-time greats, so the situation with one out would occasionally force my dad to walk three guys so he could take his chances pitching to 1941 Ted Williams with the bases full!

I don’t remember exactly how many of those computer games my dad won that summer, but it wasn’t many. His record was something like 3 wins and 159 losses. Every once in a while somebody like Lefty Grove would give up only the four runs created by Suits, and dad’s team would score enough to win. (And Suits did get caught stealing occasionally in the computer game. Even the highest steal rating in the APBA game didn’t assure 100% success,and I couldn’t figure out how to override that with a hack.)

In the final stats, Suits did not end up with a homer in every official at bat. APBA had a quirky thing built into the software where, in certain base situations, certain pitchers could reduce a homer to a double. By a complete coincidence, the final stats almost perfectly duplicated one of his stories, where he claimed to finish a season with 650 walks, 47 homers and a ground-rule double. (Needless to say, the home fans in Philly booed him and threw things on the field when he hit the double, but he calmed down the crowd by agreeing to take a pay cut.)

Not much to see here. The undefeated teams remained so. There were some losses on the bottom of The top 25 (South Florida, Arizona State, Illinois), but they were not especially surprising. Those three teams probably didn’t belong there in the first place.

Just a few short notes:

• Indiana continued to look invincible by posting a 56-6 win over UCLA.
• Oklahoma State and Wisconsin continued their tribulations. State was shut out. Wisconsin finally scored a TD in the fourth quarter after 14 consecutive quarters without one.
• Kent State won their third game of the year!
• The quarterback for North Texas, who is only a freshman, passed for 608 yards. And it wasn’t one of those Drew Brees things where the kid aired it out 80 times. He pulled that off in 49 attempts. That wasn’t a big surprise. The North Texas Mean Green (I’ll bet you didn’t know their team name) came into the game as the highest-scoring team in the FBS, and they held that position. Their next game is an interesting contrast in offensive philosophies, as Mr. 600 Yards takes on Navy, a team that runs the ball about 80% of the time.
• Speaking of Navy … If the regular season were now over, Navy would be in the playoff! As I’ve noted before, there are only four strong conferences, but the top FIVE conference winners get an automatic bid. At the moment, Navy is the top-rated conference leader outside the Fab Four, and would get the #12 seed in the tournament.

Overrated teams o’ the week

If you’ve read down to this point, you already know that the most overrated team is Navy. The computers rank them #82, but the coaches’poll ranks them #23, and they would get the 12th seed if the season ended now. The AP places them just outside the Top 25 at #26. No other team is overrated by more than 25 places, but they are more than double that. If they actually got that #12 seed, they would probably be the worst team ever to make the playoff. I hope my middle son isn’t reading this. (He is an active-duty captain in the U.S. Navy.)

It would be a miracle if Navy finishes the season in the top 25, because they have not yet come to the hard part of their schedule. If they get by high-scoring North Texas next week, their next game is against Notre Dame. Following that, it’s South Florida and Memphis, two teams that have been in the top 25 at various times this year. Three of those four match-ups are road games. It’s a long row to hoe.

The full list, based on Sagarin’s computer ratings (listed first in parens) and the AP poll:

1. 56 places – Navy (82,26)
2. 24 places – Houston (46,22)
3. 22 places – Virginia (37,15)
4. 15 places – Georgia Tech (23,8)
5. 14 places – BYU (24,10)
5. 14 places – Cincinnati (31,17)

Virginia is the most overrated team in the top fifteen.
Georgia Tech is the most overrated in the top ten (by a whisker over BYU).

Scoreboard

New rankings

New computer ratings

They had the best record in MLB this year, but things got difficult when they had to face perhaps the greatest player of all time. Tonight he was at his peak, with the best post-season game in baseball history.

• Ohtani pitched six innings and allowed only two hits, while striking out ten.
• At the plate: three at bats, three home runs. Three LONG home runs.

All of the Dodgers’ pitchers were great in this series. The Brewers got only 3.5 hits per game on their way to a .118 batting average. They never got more than five hits in a game. Four of their starting players hit below .100.

The big story of the day is that Indiana is absolutely for real. People thought that #3 Oregon was a legitimate contender for the national championship, but Indiana blew them away, 30-20. It was no fluke. The Hoosiers had more rushing yardage, more passing yardage, fewer turnovers, far more first downs (23 versus 14), more possession time, and they led at the end of every quarter. Indiana vaulted to #3 in the new poll.

On the other side of the standings, the computer’s bottom-rated FBS team, Kent State, had a helluva day. First of all, they came into the game as a betting favorite. (They were also favored by the computers because they played the second-worst FBS team and held the home field advantage.) They didn’t just cover the modest spread; they obliterated U Mass, 42-6, making Mass the lowest-rated FBS team. Kent State scored on the opening kickoff and never stopped. Maybe all the practice against the nation’s top teams is finally paying off.

The #6 Oklahoma Sooners suffered their first loss and dropped eight places. The damage was done by their arch-nemesis, Texas. As I mentioned last week, the voters were a bit harsh in dropping Texas completely from the national rankings while weaker Iowa State remained on the list.

Speaking of Iowa State, one of last week’s “overrated teams o’ the week,” they lost to struggling Colorado. That’s Colorado’s only conference win of the year. Iowa State has had its weakness exposed and can no longer be considered overrated.

Similarly, we can no longer say that Florida State is overrated. Sure, nothing has changed, but now everyone is aware of their problems. They dropped to 3-3 by losing to Pitt.

UCLA has suddenly turned into a completely different team from the sad sacks that started the season. They pulled off their second straight upset with a very convincing 38-13 road victory over Michigan State. It will still be difficult for them to climb to bowl eligibility because they play a ridiculously hard schedule that still includes Indiana, Ohio State and four other opponents with winning records.

It was a bad day for the state of Michigan in the Michigan-California match-up. While UCLA was stomping Michigan State in East Lansing, USC was across the country on their home turf, beating #15 Michigan.

It seems almost unbelievable that Penn State was thinking about a national championship just three weeks ago. Now it’s beginning to look like they might never win a conference game. They dropped to 0-3 in conference play with a loss to … Northwestern! It was yet another humiliation, as Penn State came into that game as a three-touchdown favorite.

#4 Ole Miss did pick up a W, but it was not an impressive one, given that they won by three when they were favored by 33 over Washington State.

Arizona State was ranked in the top 25 for some reason. You knew that wasn’t going to last long. They got destroyed by Utah, 42-10. Utah was unranked, but was a ten point favorite at home because the bookies were not fooled by Arizona State’s national ranking. That game lifted Utah into the top 25.

The rest of the week went approximately according to plan.

Overrated teams o’ the week

Within the top 15:

Georgia Tech: 20 places (computer 32nd place, AP poll 12th)
BYU: 18 places (33,15)

In the 16-25 group:

South Florida: 22 places (41,19)
Cincinnati: 16 places (40,24)
Memphis 14 places (36,22)

In the “just missed” 26-30 group:

Navy: 50 places (80,30)
UNLV: 41 places (70,29)

Five of the overrated teams have received votes because they are undefeated: Georgia Tech, BYU, Memphis, Navy, UNLV. In four of those cases, they are undefeated because they have played no significant teams, but Georgia Tech can boast a win over Clemson.

Scoreboard

New rankings

New computer ratings

Three of the year’s great disappointments arose from the dead.

UCLA came into Saturday’s game 0-4, as a four-touchdown underdog against Penn State, the nation’s #7 team. The Bruins needed a miracle, and they got one – by piling up a 20-point lead in the first half. Penn State came roaring back with 30 points in the second half, but it was too little, too late. Penn State is still winless in their conference.

Florida got back on track by defeating #9 Texas. That kinda moves Texas into the “disappointments” category, without letting Florida escape the group.

The Longhorns and Penn State dropped completely out of the AP top 25. That’s harsh, given that the voters left Iowa State on the list. That may leave both teams underrated, but they have plenty of games left to prove the polls wrong. Texas plays #6 Oklahoma next, which should be revealing for both teams.

Clemson crushed North Carolina 38-10 for their first conference win. Screw you, Belichick.

Things did NOT get better for Oklahoma State. They suffered a four-touchdown defeat against Arizona. This appears to be a “lost season” for them.

Last week’s “most overrated” didn’t give us any reason to think otherwise.

I guess the week went fine for Georgia Tech. They had the week off.

Former #14 Iowa State can only wish they had the week off. Their undefeated record went down in flames. Last week I mentioned that they might have been able to sneak through undefeated, given their soft schedule, but they wasted no time bursting that bubble by losing to unranked Cincinnati.

#18 Florida State went into the fourth quarter down by 25 to Miami. They did rally in the final stanza, but not enough to win.

Overrated teams o’ the week

These five teams had the greatest differential between their poll ranking and the computer evaluation of their performance

1. South Florida – ranked 24th, computer 52nd
2. Georgia Tech – ranked 13th, computers 31st
3. BYU – ranked 18th, computers 35th
4. Memphis – ranked 23rd, computers 38th
5. Iowa State – still ranked 22nd, computers 36th

Memphis provides the most interesting story on that list. They are 6-0, and they won big this week. I realize that 6-0 in the American Conference is not equivalent to 6-0 in the SEC or Big Ten, but its worth noting that one of their wins was against an SEC team. But here’s what’s interesting: if the season ended now, they would be one of the 12 teams in the playoff! The five highest-ranked conference champions get automatic bids, but only four conferences are really strong (SEC, Big 10, ACC, Big 12), so the fifth conference winner is frequently going to be a real long-shot. Boise State is often the best team outside of the Big Four, but they have struggled this year, so Memphis is currently the best team not in the four main conferences, with South Florida just behind them.

In the rest of the world:

For you gamblers, Oklahoma only beat Kent State by 44. That sounds like a big win, but the spread was either 45.5 or 46.5, depending on where you placed your bet.

Maryland blew a 20-0 lead by never scoring again. Washington won the game by scoring three TDs in the final quarter

Everything else pretty much followed the script.

Scoreboard

New polls

New computer rankings.