Big 12 Predictions, Week 10

Charts and pretty colors are nice and all, but the time has again come to put it all on the line and stake out some predictions for the upcoming week.  If you want to know how I got these numbers, take a look at the explanation in the Week 9 predictions.  While I have some reservations regarding this week's predictions, which I will explain, I am pleased with the spreadsheet's performance last week. I went 3-1 with my predictions, the one erroneous call coming on the Oklahoma State-TCU game that statistically came out even. So, no tweaks for now; we'll stick with that method for another week.

Predictions:

Baylor 35, Kansas 30

Oklahoma 38, Iowa State 20

Kansas State 33, Oklahoma State 24

Texas Christian 42, West Virginia 34

Texas Tech 39, Texas 36

Well, I don't mind telling you that the TCU-WVU matchup prediction grabbed my attention, and grabbed it hard.  I went back through my numbers closely and darn if they didn't all seem to check out.  This is definitely going to be a game to watch.  In particular the spreadsheet is not happy with WVU's defense (with good reason) but I do think this prediction is likely to be off for a couple of reasons.  I would imagine that WVU will come out angry about the last couple of weeks; they're going to be playing at home; and while TCU racked up a lot of scoring off of Baylor turnovers a couple of weeks ago, WVU is a bit better about not turning the ball over.  Still, WVU has an absolutely dreadful defense, and inasmuch as Boykin lit up Baylor, he certainly has the capacity to do the same to the Mountaineers.

The Texas Tech-Texas game looks to be a pretty good matchup.  Like so many other times this season, I think things are going to come down to Texas' quarterback play, and by things I mean whether or not the game is even close.  Tech's numbers are a bit depressed from having played the two toughest teams in the conference and having played only one of the three tragicomic defenses in the league.  I look for them to light up UT's defense; if UT's offense is missing in action again this week, the score won't be that close.

Conventional wisdom would suggest that Baylor should take care of business against Kansas.  The Bears ought to have enough offensive firepower to take care of a mediocre Big 12 defense, and if ever there was a team that a struggling defense ought to be able to stop, it is a Jayhawk team scoring on less than 20% of its drives.  Nonetheless, these two teams look fairly well matched by the numbers, for a couple of reasons.  First, Kansas has managed to hold some decent offenses in (relatively speaking) check - OSU and TCU scored 20 points on them; Texas, 21.  I think Baylor's offense is more likely to succeed against the Jayhawk defense than Texas, if for no other reason than Baylor's quarterback situation is rather less volatile, but as we've seen, Baylor has shot itself in the foot a bit with turnovers.  (Of course, that is easy to do when you have a defense stuck on autotouchdown; Baylor is still giving up 7 points every time an opponent scores.)  If there is one thing that history implies, it is that Kansas is almost certain to have its best offensive game of the season against the Bears' defense.  If Kansas really is able to score 30 points on Baylor, the Bears will have a tough row to hoe.  A Kansas offense able to get enough going that their defense smells blood in the water would spell a long afternoon for Baylor.  If, on the other hand, Baylor takes care of the ball and doesn't give Kansas too many opportunities to poke additional holes in a defense that already looks like an abused slice of Swiss cheese, the Bears should get their 4th win of the year.

The remaining two games seem to be shaking down as expected.  Looking at last week's results, the projected margins of victory seem to be minimized when performance over a season is averaged (except for the Texas-Kansas game), so seeing Oklahoma projected to outscore Iowa State by 18 points raises my eyebrows a bit - this looks like a recipe for a blowout.  But any fan of college football ought to know the consequences of taking Paul Rhodes and the Cyclones at home too lightly.  KSU appears to be a comfortable favorite over OSU; with the Red Raiders scoring almost exactly what the spreadsheet projected last week, the Cowboys are unsurprisingly projected to do the same.  Oklahoma State's defense has statistically been a bit more stingy than Texas Tech's: the Cowboys gave up 41 points to UT but held the remainder of their opponents to 14 points or less.  Tech, meanwhile, gave up 55 to KSU, 41 to OU, and 53 to TCU.  Having said that, I think Tech's opponents definitely possessed a bit more firepower, and OSU hasn't faced anything like Optimus Klein.  I look to see KSU beating this projected point total, probably scoring in the mid 40s or so.

Bonus Round: No out-of-conference game this week, so for this week's bonus challenge, we'll have to go with something a little different: can anyone find me a video or picture of Collin Klein rushing when he does NOT have the ball tucked away perfectly?

Seriously, that would be like some sort of photographic proof of the existence of Bigfoot, or the Loch Ness Monster, or of Texas A&M winning the 1997 and 2010 Big 12 Championships.

Finally, don't forget to tune in to see Bama-LSU and USC-Oregon, two major matchups with huge national championship implications.  Will LSU's defense be able to stop a very good Bama offense and give the rest of the nation hope that the Crimson Tide can be stemmed?  Can Southern Cal rebound against perhaps the most potent offense in the country?  It's going to be a good weekend of college football, folks.  See you after the dust settles.

Big 12 Spreadsheet Analysis, Week 9

Well, the sun has set on Week 9 of this college football season.  Time to see what has changed on the spreadsheet, and if it has changed my mind about anything since my recap.

The conference standings.  BCS standings are used to determined standing where no tiebreaker has been played:

1. #2 Kansas State (8-0, 5-0)
2. #12 Oklahoma (5-2, 3-1)
3. #24 Oklahoma State (5-2, 3-1)
4. #18 Texas Tech (6-2, 3-2)
5. #23 Texas (6-2, 3-2)
6. #21 West Virginia (5-2, 2-2)
7. Iowa State (5-3, 2-3)
8. Texas Christian (5-3, 2-3)
9. Baylor (3-4, 0-4)
10. Kansas (1-7, 0-5)

Offense first.  Again, let's have a look at fraction scoring drives and points per scoring drive.

CHART 1

CHART 2

Kansas State continues to lead the pack in fraction scoring drives, scoring on about 65% of all their drives.  OU is next, scoring on about 58% of drives.  Bit of a drop-off after that, with the middle of the pack of the Big 12 falling between 41-46%, and then another drop-off to the last two, Iowa State and Kansas.  Even with the benefit of having played Baylor last week, which defense (as usual) allowed Iowa State this season's high-water mark for offense, the Cyclones are only scoring on just over a quarter of their drives.  Kansas continues to be mired in offensive futility at 18%, with the Jayhawks essentially displaying the exact opposite characteristics of Baylor, Texas, and West Virginia.  Everyone in the league is scoring more than 5 points per scoring drive, with six teams averaging more than 6 points per scoring drive.

Taking another look at how much more offensive production would have been needed to overcome the differential in losses (and remember, when looking at KSU, we're not correcting for blowouts):

CHART 3

CHART 4

CHART 5

Again, I like Chart 5; in this chart, the data is sorted by the difference between the actual offensive performance and the needed offensive output.  It basically is telling us how 'close' teams were to winning all their games and provides a fascinating performance comparison with the actual standings.  From this chart, you can see that Kansas State and Oklahoma State are 1-2 (reflecting the latter's very close sole conference loss to Texas), with Oklahoma waiting in the wings ready to move up if the expected happens this weekend and the Wildcats take down the Cowboys.  Iowa State is a surprise in the fourth slot; I really think they're a better team than anyone, perhaps even they themselves, believes at this point.  Taking a look at the bottom three, one may justifiably ask oneself how WVU pulled the wool over everyone's eyes at the season's beginning.  They are a strictly decent team but they are nowhere near top 10 caliber - they've squeaked out wins against their compadres in the Worst Big 12 Defense club and have been absolutely pummelled by KSU (no shame there, to be sure) and Texas Tech (gotta go with at least a bit of shame there).

Next up, the triple charts comparison to correct for defensive performance and offensive miscues, just to see how much easier the defense made things for the offense, and how much harder the offense made things for themselves.

CHART 6

CHART 7

CHART 8

Not a whole lot of change here.  Again, don't be fooled by how high Kansas State's 'required' drives are.  Strictly speaking, KSU hasn't 'needed' a significant fraction of the points they've scored, so the bars for their 'needed' offensive production in these charts are equal to the bars for their actual performance.  Everyone else, having lost at least one conference game, needed more from their offense than they actually got.  From these charts, particularly Chart 8, you can see how much Baylor is hurting themselves with turnovers; there is a ten percentage point drop in the offensive production they've needed (the next biggest drop-off is Kansas, with a decrease of some seven percentage points), although even without allowing those turnovers they still are falling short in their offensive performance relative to their defense.  Again, only one team's bar when corrected for points off turnovers falls to the level of its actual offensive performance: that would be Oklahoma's, still suffering for its sins in the Kansas State game.

Finally, we will correct for the games in which a team blew someone out and see how their actual performance has measured up against what they actually needed.

CHART 9

Obviously, Kansas State is in the positive for this chart, as they have won all their games, several by significant margins.  The two Oklahoma schools are also positive, as their only losses have been very close and they have otherwise performed well against their other opponents.  All the rest of the schools have been subject some some beatdown or other and/or haven't been victorious by a significant margin.

On to the defense.  Again, commentary at the end.

CHART 10

CHART 11

CHART 12

CHART 13

CHART 14

CHART 15

CHART 16

CHART 17

CHART 18

By the numbers, Oklahoma has pretty much got the title of Top Big 12 Defense locked up right now.  Oklahoma State is getting stops 80.4% of the time; the Sooners, 79.6% of the time.  But then you go down to the next chart and it turns out not only is Oklahoma stopping opponents to the tune of 8 times out of ten, but when their opponents do score, they only get 5.7 points per scoring drive (Tech beats them out in this catagory, giving up only 5.5 points per scoring drive).  Put these things together, remember that it clearly wasn't the defense's fault that KSU dropped OU in Norman back in September, and you pretty much get the picture.  They're coming off a tough loss to ND, in which they ostensibly gave up 30 points, but recall that 20 of those ND points came in the 4th quarter, 3 after a magnificant Te'o interception, and 7 from a garbage time ND touchdown after the offense went four-and-out, turning the ball over deep in their own territory with under 3:30 to play.  Right up until 5 minutes to go in the game, before that interception, the OU defense had kept the team in the position to win.

But Kansas State is right up there; OU, OSU, and KSU are the only defenses getting more than 7 stops in 10.  Kansas' defense is an interesting study: they are certainly nowhere near the best, but also certainly nowhere near the worst either; so the fact that they are needing to stop opponent offensive drives more than 90% of the time tells you how much is wrong with the Jayhawk offense.  Even having played against a struggling UT defense last week, Kansas is still looking to score 20 points in a Big 12 conference game.  Fortunately for them this week, they are going up against a Baylor defense that by now looks so shell-shocked that I'm amazed General Patton hasn't crawled out of his grave yet to slap it.

In summary, Kansas State is still setting the gold standard for overall team performance in the Big 12.  Oklahoma is a solid team and has more than enough talent to have challenged the Wildcats, but offensive miscues crushed them in their game against KSU and last Saturday they ran into a Notre Dame team that is far better than anyone thought at this point last week.  Conversely, Kansas State is making hardly any mistakes whatsoever.  It is all too frequent to see examples of players and teams that never quite managed to live up to their promise; it is much less common to see a player or a team display the mental engagement and fortitude, and combine those with solid fundamental skills, required to play week in and week out at the very peak of their potential, but that is what Kansas State seems to me to be doing this year.  I'm not sure if they have the stuff to beat Alabama, but that is hardly a slight.  Heck, Steve Spurrier thinks Bama could take down the Chiefs or the Jaguars; a bit of hyperbole, but it speaks to the sort of juggernaut Nick Saban has unleashed down in Tuscaloosa.

I don't have too much to say about OSU this week, except to emphasize that they are still a big player in the conference right now.  With a game against KSU coming up this week, they still control their destiny in the conference; and they'll play the Sooners at the end of November.  After the Kansas State game this week there will be more to say about them; if Kansas State and OU take them down, their game against Tech probably determines who will take the 3rd and 4th spots in the conference.

Again, Iowa State is hanging in the middle of the pack.  Yes, they're slumming at #7 in the Big 12 right now, but with games left against Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and West Virginia, they are sitting pretty, in my opinion.  Their offense is weak, to be sure; but they will be going up against two of the three worst defenses in the Big 12 in Texas and WVU, and dealing with the worst offense in the league in Kansas.  They also have a defense which is very capable of dragging WVU's and Texas' offenses down to the level of their own offense, as they proved last week against Baylor.  Oklahoma is going to Ames this weekend, and we all know what happened to the last Oklahoma school to visit Iowa State.  The Cyclones' year has actually, up to this point, been shaping up almost identically to Baylor's last season; with any sort of production from the quarterback position at all, they are very dangerous.  Keep your eyes on the Cyclones, folks.  They could fall flat - again, that pesky QB situation - but they have got themselves in pretty darned good position to get 8 wins this season.

Another team to keep an eye on is Texas Tech.  I alluded to it above, but Tech has the worst out of the way with losses to OU and Kansas State.  They will be going up against Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma State, and Baylor to close out the season, and should at least split those games to finish with 8 wins.

Texas looks to be due for a fall.  They squeaked out wins just barely against Oklahoma State, Baylor, and Kansas.  Their numbers seem to be trending with WVU's and Baylor's, and this week they visit Lubbock, where Tech shut down WVU.  David Ash is no Geno Smith, and Tech's defense is, I think, better than Collin Klein et al. made it appear.  After Tech, UT gets Iowa State and TCU at home, and if your numbers are trending with Baylor's you should be afraid of those games.  Then UT closes out the season taking a trip to Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium.  Yikes.  The Longhorns have 6 wins and are bowl eligible; I think they will struggle to get to 8 and, frankly, are fortunate to have won all three of their conference victories, winning those three games by a total of 15 points.  That's cutting things very close; the other team to have been victorious by an average of 5 points in its conference wins is WVU, and we've seen the trajectory of their season.  There's no room for error in Austin this season.

Overall, the conference picture is becoming a bit clearer.  As of right now, these are my Big 12 conference power rankings, again with BCS standings:

1. #2 Kansas State
2. #12 Oklahoma
3. #24 Oklahoma State
4. #18 Texas Tech
5. Iowa State
6. #21 West Virginia
7. Texas Christian
8. #23 Texas
9. Baylor
10. Kansas

Kansas State is obvious.  OU gets the nod over OSU simply because, right now, OU has only lost to KSU in conference play and has a respectable loss to ND out-of-conference (although that Cowboy loss to Arizona is looking a lot better these days, amirite, Lane Kiffin?).  Ultimately, Oklahoma State controls its destiny - a win this weekend probably catapaults them to the top.  I'm having a hard time dropping anyone too far after a loss to Kansas State, and Texas Tech's only other loss came to an angry Sooners squad, so they get the benefit of the doubt at #4.  They also have a distinctly winnable schedule ahead of them, with OSU the biggest question mark in my mind.  Iowa State may appear to be a bit over-ranked, but remember they've got the worst of their schedule out of the way, a solid win against TCU, and played KSU just about as tough as anyone has been able to thus far.  WVU may deserve that #5 slot, but while the Mountaineers' losses in the last two weeks were admittedly against quality opponents, it is the way their offense stumbled in those losses that worries me.  This week they have a game that should be winnable against TCU, but then the Oklahoma schools take their shots at the Mountaineers and WVU has to go to Ames thereafter.  If WVU can get some solid wins out of that, then I'll feel better about bumping them back up into the top half of the conference; but if that vaunted offense can't perform, they really don't have a chance at salvaging a season that started with so much anticipation.  TCU's location is basically the result of being shut out completely through three quarters by the Cowboys after putting themselves in good position in the first half of their game last weekend.  Texas is suffering from a distinct lack of style points that gives me little confidence regarding the conclusion of their season, but they probably stand to benefit from, if nothing else, TCU playing four currently ranked teams (UT in Austin being one of them) to finish the season.  Baylor and Kansas will clarify this weekend which team is at the bottom of the Big 12.  They are 9 and 10 this week and will be 9 and 10 next week; I just don't know which team will be which.

Stay tuned for our Spreadsheet predictions...

Big 12 Week 9 Recap

Well, you've seen the predictions.  Let's see how things shook down.  I'll try to make some commentary on the games I actually watched and keep my blathering to a minimum regarding the ones I didn't.  I was mostly watching the South Carolina-Tennessee game early (and folks, let's say a prayer for Marcus Lattimore.  That injury goes in the file with Theismann's and Prothro's), saw the KSU-Texas Tech game in the middle of the day, and moved between Baylor-Iowa State and Oklahoma-Notre Dame late.

Prediction: Iowa State 40, Baylor 35
Reality: Iowa State 35, Baylor 21

Game Notes:  This game was a comedy of errors.  The first two drives of the game: Iowa State attempted an onside kick to open the game that didn't even make it 10 yards and was recovered by Baylor.  Florence then fumbled on the ensuing drive trying to stretch into the endzone.  Iowa State took over and was promptly penalized for a chop block.  Baylor then gave all 10 yards back with two consecutive offsides penalties.  The Bears finally got a stop, but then a Baylor player was hit by the subsequent bouncing punt and Iowa State recovered.  Despite their receivers dropping passes like they were sponsors and the football was Lance Armstrong, the Cyclones picked up a few more yards only to miss a field goal.

It was pretty bad.

The errors continued in the second half.  Iowa State took a 21-14 lead into the half and got the ball first in the third quarter, only for Jantz to throw an interception despite having a wide open receiver.  That was Baylor's first takeaway in conference play, but their ensuing drive sputtered when the questionable decision was made to line up in shotgun and run a read option on 4th-and-1.  The Cyclones took advantage and went up 28-14, and it was all over but the crying for Baylor.

And the errors this night were by no means limited to the field.  Fox managed to lose the feed immediately after ISU's fourth touchdown and started airing first a random interview and then a halftime encore.  Fans missed the entire rest of the third quarter.  Not cool, Fox.  After the feed came back, watching five minutes of the fourth quarter made it pretty clear that the Bears had quit, so I switched over to the OU-ND game.

Prediction: Texas 37, Kansas 29
Reality: Texas 21, Kansas 17

Game Notes: At least one person who saw the original prediction expressed surprise that the game looked to be that close.  Turns out, it was even closer, in keeping with Kansas' recurrent theme of playing conference opponents closely if they aren't named Kansas State or Oklahoma.  I didn't see much of this game, as I was watching the Gamecocks take on the Vols, but yet again at quarterback, the Longhorns found themselves on the horns of a dilemma (heh, heh).  And yet again Kansas' anemic offense proved their downfall - the Jayhawks haven't scored more than 20 points in a conference game yet.

Prediction: Kansas State 35, Texas Tech 25.
Reality: Kansas State 55, Texas Tech 24.

Game Notes: Wow.  Just wow.  I looked at the Wildcats' score against West Virginia last week and said, "ok, but that was West Virginia's defense we're talking about."  All I can say now is, Bill Snyder, I believe, help thou my unbelief.

I suppose it says quite a bit about my differences from the apparent prevailing attitude of college football fans that KSU has been my favorite team to watch this year.  They aren't fancy.  They aren't flashy.  What they are is well-rounded.  They give their opponents almost nothing through mistakes.  They capitalize on opponent mistakes almost automatically.  They are utterly atavistic in their approach to the game.  A Kansas State drive does not make the Top Ten play reel.  A Kansas State drive is not quick-striking.  A Kansas State drive is a 9-10 play, 4-6 minute, grinding, pounding thing that breaks your back and crushes your soul before Collin Klein scores on you in some way.

In short, Kansas State is not the best at anything...except executing perfectly.  And for me, they are a heck of a lot of fun to watch.

Klein and Hubert absolutely shredded the Tech defense.  The offensive play that sticks in my mind is that pretty little shovel pass to rub salt in the Red Raiders' wounds.  Make no mistake: Tech is, by Big 12 standards, a very respectable defense.  May God have mercy on Baylor and Texas when they go up against KSU, for the Wildcats will have none.

In an amusing quirk, my score prediction for Texas Tech was off by only one point.  The only reason for that is a garbage time, face-saving TD pass for Doege late in the 4th.

One last thought: folks have been saying for a couple of weeks that the dropped Oregon-KSU game would hurt KSU.  I've seen that as entirely possible...but with KSU sitting above Oregon in the polls, a resurgent Irish staking out a signature victory in Norman, and the Wildcats also putting up impressive numbers on #14 Texas Tech, could it bite Oregon instead?  Hmm.  I await the release of the BCS standings.

Prediction: Oklahoma State 29, TCU 29, advantage TCU
Reality: Oklahoma State 36, TCU 14

Game Notes: Again, I didn't see much of this game as I was watching the Wildcats demolish the Red Raiders.  I'm actually rather pleased with OK State's scoring here - I was only off of their final score by a touchdown.  When you consider that OK State finally has their starting QB back, I consider that prediction respectable.  TCU came out on fire with a defensive score (interception returned for touchdown) and a Boykin TD pass to go up 14-0, but was utterly shut down from the 2nd quarter on.  Great win for the Cowboys; disappointment for the Horned Frogs, who are now 1-3 since losing Pachall to extracurricular activities.

If I had to miss a pick, it was nice for it to be the one game that statistically was the real tossup of the week.

BONUS ROUND!

Prediction: Oklahoma 26, Notre Dame 17
Reality: Notre Dame 30, Oklahoma 13

Game Notes: No bonus for me this week.  In the first half, when I could tear my attention from the pillow fight developing in Ames, Notre Dame was looking legit.  During a game, the stat that really reflects Notre Dame's performance is the number of veins that can be counted popping out on Brian Kelly's face and neck.  They showed a shot of him at the end of the first quarter, his face did not appear empurpled, and nary a vein was to be seen.  Not a good sign for the Sooners early.

By halftime the score was 10-6 in favor of the Irish.  Annoyingly enough, the OU-ND halftime exactly corresponded to FSSW's Halftime Now Redux.  But 5 minutes into the 4th quarter of the ISU-Baylor game, I decided to switch full-time to the game with two teams playing to win.  Notre Dame dominated the time of possession in the 3rd quarter, but came away only with 3 points.  Nonetheless, with 13 minutes to go in the 4th, the Irish still led 13-6; however, with the Irish facing 3rd-and-7 deep in their own territory, a shot of Brian Kelly yelling at an assistant after the Irish burned a timeout revealed an increasingly plethoric complexion and two veins, one on the neck and one on the temple.  Hmm.  Not a good sign for Notre Dame.

Well, the Irish failed to convert, punted, and gave the ball back to the Sooners around midfield.  Just like that, two plays later, Jones to Saunders for 35 yards, OU was in the Red Zone, and you could almost hear Brent Musburger whispering to himself "they call him the Belldozer" and breathing heavily in the booth.

Sure enough the Belldozer came in, and then he did something almost unprecedented: he threw a forward pass.  To put this in context for you Irish fans who may not have seen much OU football, this was as if Mother Teresa suddenly announced one day that she'd decided it was time to hang up the habit and retire to Boca Raton.  It is entirely out of character; one simply doesn't expect it to happen.  But a couple of plays later Blake got back in character, belldozed his way into the endzone, and it was all tied up at 13.

Uh oh, another shot of Kelly.  But the veins had gone back down, though the complexion was still ruddy.  Don't let the ruddiness fool you, keep your eye on those veins.  Boom!  Long bomb from Golson and the Irish were on the OU 15.  A couple of plays later, Golson did some dozing of his own.  20-13, Irish.

Sooners headed back down the field.  A tipped pass floated invitingly; a diving Te'o nabbed it out of the air.  Or did he?  Time for a review.  Another shot of Kelly.  Still red, but now he stood impassively, displaying a decidedly un-Gaelic calm, like Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise (does anyone else think Brian Kelly looks like William Shatner, or is it just me?), not a vein in sight.  This was gonna stand.  Yup, it did.  Field goal for ND ensued.

4-and-out by the Sooners, another Irish TD, and suddenly I'm believing that the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are for reals.  For Reals.  Brent Musburger then suddenly announced that the Irish are relevant again, and I was immediately plunged back into doubt.  No!  Mustn't let Musburger create doubt!  Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut, assuming it survives and predators and doesn't starve first; and there are, as far as I know, no natural predators of college football commentators.

Great win for the Irish.  Right now, if I had a vote, I put the Irish at #3 behind Bama and KSU and above Oregon.  That, though, is more a function of the fact that the Irish are undefeated through the hardest part of their schedule while Oregon has three tough opponents left to play.  To close out the season, ND plays Pitt, Boston College, Wake Forest, and USC.  Oregon, however, plays USC, Cal, Stanford, and a surprising Oregon State.  If both win out, I think Oregon claws back ahead.

Hard to believe we're well over halfway through the season.  Still a lot of great football ahead, though.  See ya'll next week.

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.

Big 12 Spreadsheet Analysis, Week 8

Big 12 conference play is well underway.  All but two teams have played 4 conference games; Baylor and Oklahoma State have played 3.  The conference standings are as follows:

1. #4 Kansas State (7-0, 4-0)
2. #15 Texas Tech (6-1, 3-1)
3. #8 Oklahoma (5-1, 3-1)
4. Oklahoma State (4-2, 2-1)
5. Texas Christian (5-2, 2-2)
6. Texas (5-2, 2-2)
7. #25 West Virginia (5-2, 2-2)
8. Iowa State (4-3, 1-3)
9. Baylor (3-3, 0-3)
10. Kansas (1-6, 0-4)

Basic offensive and defensive statistics:

 

Let's get these into chart form and examine them a bit more closely.  It bears noting right at the start that TCU's and Texas Tech's numbers are a tad bit skewed by their epic overtime game last weekend.

CHART 1

CHART 2

 From these two charts a rough idea of offensive performance can be obtained.  Kansas State, Oklahoma, Baylor, and TCU are scoring on more than 50% of their drives right now; Baylor and Kansas State are also scoring a respectable number of points per drive.  Oklahoma and TCU, conversely, are down below 6 points per scoring drive.  On the other side of the coin, you can see just how anemic Kansas' offense is relative to the current Big 12 standard.  They are scoring on just under 15% of their drives, and are right there with Oklahoma below 5 points per drive.  One last thought before leaving these charts: Baylor has as many drives in 3 conference games as Kansas State has in 4.

So how much better would each offense have to perform to keep their team undefeated thus far?

CHART 3

 Woah.  Given the fact that Baylor's offense appears to be matching up pretty well against the rest, this is our first inkling of why they are 0-3 in conference play thus far.  Baylor would have to have scored on more than 70% of their drives, given their average points per drive, to win all 3 games.  WVU's offense also seems to have been under some pressure to perform.  Note that Kansas State's bar height is unchanged, reflecting their undefeated status.

You've probably been scrolling up and down between this chart and the Chart 1.  Let's put the two together so you don't have to do that anymore:

CHART 4

CHART 5

In both charts, we now have the team's actual fraction of scoring drives in front.  In the top chart, the teams are arranged by the fraction of scoring they needed to overcome their differential; in the bottom, by the difference between their needed and actual scoring drives.  In the bottom, Kansas State of course has no difference between the fraction of actual and needed scoring drives.  The two Oklahoma schools follow, falling short of undefeated by only 5 points in their respective single losses.  The gaps widen to reflect blowouts - Kansas by KSU, Baylor by TCU, West Virginia by Texas Tech.

Here's a question: how much more of a differential would the offenses have to overcome without counting those teams' defensive contributions?  Look below: this is the same chart as Chart 4, but with a middle row added disregarding defensive scores off the offenses.

CHART 6

Not a whole lot of change, but one subtlety in particular speaks volumes.  KSU's middle bar bumps up just a tad, and why is that?  They beat Oklahoma by 5 points...and 7 of those points came off a fumble recovery for touchdown.  That little bump tells a story between being 3-1 in Big 12 play and hanging out somewhere between #15-20 in the rankings, and being undefeated, #3 in the BCS standings, and generating a fair amount of Heisman buzz for Collin Klein.

Let's see what happens when we disregard the teams' defensive scoring and some points scored by opponents off turnovers.  How much harder did the offenses make their jobs with turnovers?

CHART 7

CHART 8

In Chart 7 we additionally disregard any opponent points off turnovers that occurred with the offense driving inside the defenses' 20 yard line.  Sure, it's disappointing to miss points down there, but the defense can hardly complain about that situation.  There's not a whole lot of change, but one more little subtlety related to that OU-Kansas State game pops up.  OU's middle bar slips down a hair, reflecting a long KSU drive following a Blake Bell fumble that resulted in a Wildcat field goal.  Not giving up that score wouldn't have won OU the game, but it is yet another little mistake that opened the door for Snyder's team to slip through.  Moving down to Chart 8, and now disregarding any opponent points off turnovers that occurred beyond the offenses' own 35 yard line, now we start to see those middle bars dropping.  Again, the OU-KSU game looms large.  OU's middle bar now matches its actual scoring drives, reflecting the fact that not only did Kansas State score a defensive touchdown, 10 of the rest of their points also came after turnovers.  Again, the difference between a #3 and a #8 BCS ranking.  (While we're on the subject, it is worth noting that KSU has given opponents no points - as in ZERO - off of turnovers in any way.  The only points they've given a defense came against Kansas when John Hubert was pulled down in his own end zone for a safety.  You really have to be perfect playing against Kansas State; they will be when they play you.)

I could go further and disregard points off any turnovers, but that just doesn't seem fair - if the offense gives the opposing team such a short field to work with, we're not going to let them off the hook by decreasing a negative score differential any further.

Finally, let's just see how these teams' overall scoring drives match with the minimum drives they would have needed to win all games:

CHART 9

For what it's worth, I don't particularly like this metric.  For example, you can see that Oklahoma has scored more than enough points to win all of its games, many of them coming from the Sooners kicking Texas while the Longhorns were down.  I provide this chart for some novelty value, partly so I can point out how easy KSU's defense has been making the Wildcats' offensive life easier, and partly so I can note that, despite all the talk of Texas' 'SEC-like' defense leading the way, they are in the same offensive juggernaut, defense optional boat as much as if not more than the rest of the conference.  Texas', Baylor's, and WVU's defenses are battling it out for the title of worst defense in the Big 12; in fairness to them, however, all three teams have played one another, and all three of those teams have relatively quick-strike, high-powered offenses.

 Let's quickly post up some defensive charts.  The idea behind the defensive charts is essentially similar to that behind the offensive charts.

CHART 10

CHART 11

CHART 12

CHART 13

CHART 14

CHART 15

CHART 16

CHART 17

CHART 18

The first thing that pops out is just how bad of shape the Jayhawk offense is in.  If you need that many stops to win games, you just aren't scoring.  Having said that, a great deal of those needed defensive stops came during the KSU and OU blowouts, and as West Virginia, Texas, and Texas Tech can attest, those teams can put up a lot of points when they want to.  Kansas didn't give up a whole ton of points to Oklahoma State and TCU; of course, the Cowboys have been struggling with injuries at the QB position, but then again, TCU still had Pachall for the Kansas game.

If there is a glimmer of hope to Kansas' season to date, it is that their defense seems to easily be beating out WVU's, Texas', and Baylor's.  The two latter defenses by all rights should be able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the games; the fact that they aren't says quite a lot about the defensive ineptitude on those teams.  The stat that is most damning regarding Baylor's defense in particular is points per opponent scoring drive.  Count 'em: SEVEN.  The Bears are handing out touchdowns like candy on Halloween.  The statistics sound like one of those commercials for a home security system or a cancer treatment center: "Once every 62 seconds of game time, an opponent scores a point on Baylor" (cue sad violin music in the background and shots of worried faces).

On the other side of things, Oklahoma's defense is shaping up to be a real monster.  As we've already seen, the defense has played more than well enough for OU to be undefeated this season.  Take away just one or two miscues on offense in the KSU game and the Sooners are probably either sitting at #2 in the BCS, or control their own destiny with a game against Notre Dame in Norman coming up this weekend.

That, though, is not to take anything away from Kansas State.  They are racking up stops as well, and are in the middle of the pack with respect to points allowed per drive.  The biggest number for Kansas State right now, though, doesn't appear on the charts: that number is 41, the number of drives the Wildcats' opponents have had through 4 conference games.  Only Baylor's and OSU's opponents have fewer - and those two teams have only played 3 conference games.  Of the other teams that have played 4 conference games, Kansas' opponents have 44 total drives; WVU's, 46; all the rest, 49 or more.  As mentioned above, you have to be perfect playing Kansas State, because A) they will be perfect when they play you, and B) you will not have many chances to get it right.

And that, my friends, is the initial installment of the Big 12 Spreadsheet Analysis.  A list of Week 10 predictions based on this data is forthcoming shortly, and then there's nothing left but the waiting for the weekend.

Big 12 Spreadsheet FAQ

As of the time of this post, its title is a lie.  The Big 12 Spreadsheet is only a few days old.  Nobody has asked any questions about the Big 12 Spreadsheet.  The only people who know about the spreadsheet wish I would stop talking about it.  So I'm going to just guess what sorts of questions one might have about the Big 12 Spreadsheet, answer those, and add any other questions which are asked frequently as we traipse merrily into the future.

Q. What is the Big 12 Spreadsheet?

A. The Big 12 Spreadsheet is literally a spreadsheet, created by me in Microsoft Excel, into which I input game statistics of Big 12 football teams and out of which I pull some data from low-level analysis and charts.  I am hopeful that it will prove a useful tool for comparing the teams, analyzing matchups, and possibly even predicting game winners and scores.  That latter in particular is probably excessively optimistic.  At the very least it is a database of certain specific statistics which I cull primarily from the drive logs over on ESPN.

Q. What is the basis for this analysis?

A. As the saying goes, the final score is the only stat that matters.  What I am trying to do is distill the essense of how teams get to their final scores.  My thesis is that, disregarding almost everything else, the story of how teams get those scores is told by the drives.  My hypothesis is that if you can analyze how an offense drives the ball, and how a defense tries to stop a drive, you can see how a game is likely to play out.

Q. What stats are you specifically collecting?

A. In keeping with the above thesis, I am pulling information about each teams' successive drives throughout their Big 12 conference play.  Basically I am taking each teams' score and breaking down how they got those scores, whether offensively, defensively, or on special teams.  I further break down the offensive scoring by the length of the drive, and whether or not the drive was initiated by a turnover.

Q. So what are the final inputs that go into the spreadsheet?

A. I have 14 input cells per team per game:

• 1-3. Offensive drives starting inside offense 20, starting between offense 20 - defense 35, starting inside defense 35.
• 4-6. Offensive scoring drives starting inside offense 20, starting between offense 20 - defense 35, starting inside defense 35.
• 7-9. Offensive points off scoring drives starting inside offense 20, starting between offense 20 - defense 35, starting inside defense 35.
• 10-12. Offensive points of scoring drives starting after turnovers inside offense 20, starting between offense 20 - defense 35, starting inside defense 35.
• 13. Defensive scoring.
• 14. Special teams scoring.

Q. Why did you pick the offense 20 and defense 35 yard lines as being important?

A. As much as I could, I tried to stick with objective data.  This was a subjective thing I couldn't get rid of.  I picked the offense 20 yard line as the point to which balls are bought after touchbacks on punts and turnover recoveries.  That seemed as reasonable a place as any to divide drives of 'normal' length and drives of unusually 'long' length.  I debated whether or not to go with the 25 due to the new kickoff touchback rule, but decided against it.  I'm still not sold on that rule anyway, and pinning someone inside the 20 was and is viewed as a coup for punters.

The defense 35 yard line was a bit harder.  I waffled for awhile, and finally decided it was a useful point to divide drives of 'normal' length and drives of unusually 'short' length.  If the offense were to get the ball at the 35 yard line and get absolutely stuffed at the line of scrimmage by the defense on three straight plays, they're looking at a long but within generally accepted field goal range - about 52-ish yards.  It wouldn't be fair to blame a defense for yielding a scoring drive if the opponent started more or less within field goal range to begin with.  If you take the 40 yard line instead of the 35, you're looking at a 57 yard field goal, which is certainly doable for many college kickers but is starting to push the outer edges of their range.  If you take the 30 instead, that gives a field goal of less than 50 yards, which ought to be well within the range of someone getting a scholarship to put points up on the board three at a time.

Q. Are there any other subjective things that are reflected in the spreadsheet?

A. There are probably a bunch of subjective things, including exactly how I decided to crunch the numbers, and what data I picked to analyse to begin with.  But the other subjective thing that comes immediately to mind  with respect to the data itself is whether or not non-scoring drives at the end of a half get counted towards a team's total.  For example, suppose a team is up by 30 points or so and gets the ball with 3 minutes to play.  They're not necessarily driving to score, they're driving to get a couple of first downs and run out the clock.  If the team that is down at the end of the half has the ball, that drive would seem to demand counting, but what if that team takes over with less than 20 seconds to play - is it quite fair to drop their fraction of scoring drives in that case by including this non-scoring drive?  So there is some subjectivity when it comes to which end-of-half drives get counted, and which ones don't.  I tend to err on the side of counting the drive if the team that is down has the ball, and not counting the drive if the converse holds true; but I also try to take into account how long the drive lasted, how much yardage was picked up, and even what sort of plays the offense was running as an attempt to figure out just what the offense was trying to do.

Q. What do you do with the data?

A. Basically I use this data to do as much separating of offensive and defensive performance as possible.  If the defense scored on a fumble recovery, for instance, I don't credit that score to the offense when assessing their performance.  If the offense drove inside the opponent 20 and then turned the ball over on the 5 yard line, I have no problem blaming the defense for the ensuing touchdown after the opponent's 95 yard drive.  If the offense turned the ball over on their own 5, and the defense then allowed a 5 yard scoring 'drive,' I can filter that out when analyzing the defense.  That's the reason I separated out the scoring drives in the first place.

Q. What results seem particularly illuminating?

A. The simple fractions of scoring drives and average points per scoring drive are interesting measures of offensive performance, and the converse for the defense (fractions of opponent drives stopped, and opponent points per scoring drive).  I also went through and had the spreadsheet calculate how many more average scoring drives a team would have needed to overcome the score differential in the case of a loss (or conversely, how many opponent scoring drives would needed to have been stopped) and add those to the team's total actual scoring drives as a measure of just how much better the offense would have needed to be to be undefeated.  Additionally, the spreadsheet calculated the minimum number of offensive scoring drives a team would have needed to win all their games - a metric that gives some useful information, but one I just don't like as much since it seems to be analogous to allowing an English major to take grade points from a literature class and apply them to an organic chemistry class.  Oklahoma, for instance, has scored more than enough points to win all of its conference games.  But a lot of those points came from OU kicking Texas while the Longhorns were down; you can't take those 'extra' points and apply them to the Kansas State game.

Beyond that, I tried to filter out scoring not directly attributable to the offense (i.e. punt return for touchdown), and opponent scoring that the defense couldn't be blamed for (i.e. turnover returned for touchdown) and re-assess the offensive and defensive performances in the light of the scoring changes after such filtration.

Q. Could you do this for other conferences?

A. Theoretically, but it wouldn't be as easy (hah).  At this particular point in history this project is easier than it has ever been for the Big 12, since every conference member plays every other conference member, so a master template can be created into which game data can be input for one team's offensive analysis and concomittantly linked to the opponent's defensive analysis for that game.  Creating such a spreadsheet for the PAC-12, B1G, SEC, ACC, or other similarly large conference would be complicated by the divisional structure of those conferences.  It could be done, but there would have be some redundancy in the creation of a master template to account for year-to-year scheduling fluctuations, and the variation between the teams' cross-divisional opponents might limit the extrapolation of such data (I say might; I have no idea how useful this data will be for the Big 12 itself, yet).  For that (to paraphrase Voltaire) agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Big East football conference, but is neither Big nor East nor a football conference, I suppose it could be done as easily; likewise for the Mountain West, Sun Belt, and current incarnation of the WAC.

Q. YOUR QUESTION HERE!

The Big 12 Spreadsheet

There are many ways to tell when autumn is arriving.  Days start to shorten, nights start to lengthen, the air starts to cool, children start to go back to school, and college football fans start to call for the heads of coaching staff.

And so it came to pass, in the dark days of October, in this Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twelve, that the fans of my alma mater became restive, being disheartened in particular by a peculiar lack of defensive success, and a resultant lack of victories in conference play.  And these fans began to exclaim, in the most agitated of manners, "rabble rabble rabble."

Some demanded blood.  Some pleaded for patience.  Statistics were hurled back and forth, quoted, dismissed, emphasized, reviled.

In the midst of this firestorm, I found myself combing through drive logs on ESPN and Yahoo Sports, plucking at this and at that statistic, and wondering if offensive performances could be examined in isolation from the rest of the team's performance, and likewise defensive performances, and whether or not such examination might allow comparisons between teams in the conference, and thus yield information of prognostic value.  So I decided to put together a spreadsheet, courtesy of Microsoft Excel, into which I could input stats, allow the program to crunch the numbers, and obtain some quick and dirty analysis.

At first this seemed a relatively innocuous task - how often does an offense score?  How many points per scoring drive?  How many scoring drives does a defense allow?  How many opponent points per drive?  But then, insidiously, the realizations of how intertwined and entangled offensive and defensive performances began to creep in - how much blame can be borne by the defense for giving up points if the offense turns the ball over deep inside their own territory?  How much by the offense if they turn the ball over deep in the opponent's territory, and then the defense allows a lengthy drive?  How much easier did the defense make the offense's job by returning a turnover for touchdown?  How much impact did special teams have on field position?  How badly did that missed field goal hurt?

And the project veered alarmingly and rapidly in the direction of Excessively Complex.

Fighting desperately to keep things under control, while not simplifying the analysis to the point of uselessness, I ended up with a myriad of columns interconnected by a web of cross-references and containing a proliferation of Excel formulas I'd had no idea even existed before starting the spreadsheet.  By the numbers, there are 14 input fields per team per game in the master input sheet, and a total of 54 additional columns of cells pulling info from the input fields and crunching data in various ways.  These feed into separate offensive and defensive analysis sheets, which run to some 30+ columns themselves and which are finally funneled into two more offensive and defensive sheets devoted to reporting the data in the visual form of charts.

With the spreadsheet more or less in a state of completion, though, the work is only partway done.  Over the next few weeks, as more matchups play out and more data is compiled, I hope to get a clearer picture of whether or not this thing is actually a useful predictive tool, a curious snapshot of team performance at a given point during the season, or a gigantic waste of time.  At this point you know as much as I do, so stay tuned...