Big 12 Predictions, Week 9

As I said in an earlier post, there are those philistines who would claim that statistics are for losers.  Winning is all that matters, right? Well, let's see if we can take some of those stats and predict the winners and statisticians of Week 10.

We have four Big 12 matchups on our plate this week, one Big 12 team (Oklahoma) is playing an out-of-conference opponent, and one (WVU) is on bye. I'm going to begin prognostications in as simple a fashion as possible.  If things go well, excellent.  If not well, just keep in mind that, as a Secretary of Defense once opined, you predict the future with the statistics you have, not the statistics you might want, or wish to have at a later time.

In brief, I am going to take some selected offensive and defensive statistics, average them, and see how many points each team should end up scoring.  Let's look at the Baylor-Iowa State matchup as an example.

Baylor offensive stats: 13.33 offensive drives per game, scoring on 52.5% of drives, and scoring 6.38 points per scoring drive.

Iowa State defensive stats: 12.25 opponent offensive drives per game, opponents scoring on 38.78% of drives, and opponents scoring 5.526 points per scoring drive.

Averaging these out indicates that Baylor should expect to have 12.79 offensive drives, score on 5.83 drives, and score 5.95 points per scoring drive, to end up with 34.76 points.  We'll round that up to 35.

Doing the same for Iowa State indicates that their offense will score 36 points.  However, ISU is also getting some scoring from their defense to the tune of 3.5 points per game.  So we'll go ahead and tack those on to get a final Iowa State score of 40.

Boom!  There's our first prediction: Iowa State 40, Baylor 35.  That makes me a sad panda.  But numbers are like hips: they don't lie.

You get the picture.  Let's see the predictions:

Iowa State 40, Baylor 35.

Texas 37, Kansas 29.

Kansas State 35, Texas Tech 25.

Oklahoma State 29, TCU 29.

Hmm, the numbers claim that the OK State-TCU matchup is pretty even. Let's take that prediction at face value and assume that this game ends up being TCU's second overtime game in as many weeks. On the season, OK State has started a drive inside the defense 35 yard line once this year (against Iowa State) and failed to score. TCU, on the other hand, has started 5 drives with the ball inside the defense 35 (4 against Texas Tech in that overtime game, once against Baylor) and has scored every time, racking up 6.2 points per drive. The numbers give the advantage to TCU.

Since I don't have any hard data on Notre Dame, picking a winner of this Sooner on Irish brawl will have to be done the old fashioned way, requiring some contemplation of my navel as I assess how the teams make me feel.  Oklahoma struggled against a tough Kansas State defense, but has really pulled it together since and beat up on a good Tech defensive squad.  As long as they bring that sort of intensity to the field on Saturday, they should be able to overpower a good ND defense that hasn't seen an offense like the Sooners yet this year.  On the flip side, OU is proving to be one of the better defenses in the Big 12, and the Irish offense has been a bit unimpressive this year.

My navel observes, somewhat contrarily, that OU is 1-8 against the Irish historically.  But I remind my navel that history essentially means nothing in these degenerate latter days, with the last Notre Dame championship more than two decades in the rearview mirror; the Fighting Irish recently seen sporting helmets with one side a dark blue, depicting a squatting leprechaun taking a dump in the player's left earhole; and the Last Bastion of Independents (sorry, BYU) on the verge of endgame with the ACC, but still defiantly playing the we'll-join-but-oh-not-really card to the bitter end.  And yet!  The Irish are undefeated as they roll into Norman; undefeated due to the strenuous efforts of their defense.  They have knocked off three ranked teams, and suddenly those gold domes are looking just a bit shinier (really, they do; they're doing something weird with them these days).  And suddenly this game starts to look more and more like a historic matchup, at least for Notre Dame.

An Irish win, and South Bend will lose its collective mind; and Brian Kelly will be seen wearing a veil so as to conceal his shining visage; and the earth will swallow up Greensboro, NC; and NBC will genuflect, saying Hail Marys, making the sign of the cross, and throwing wads of $100 bills at the feet of His Eminence Jack Swarbrick.

An Irish loss, and the leaden reality of the last decade will sink back in; and the powers of the ACC will breathe an ever so small, and ever so slightly vindictive sigh of relief; and NBC will circle 2015 on the calender and put a question mark next to it; and the defiant mantra "everything but football" will start to sound more and more like the band on the Titanic.

Enough!  My navel looks a lot like an 'O' when you get right down to it.  Oklahoma 26, Notre Dame 17.