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...