Happy Thanksgiving, folks! It's rivalry weekend, and we're going retro here at the Big 12 Spreadsheet.
Hope you're ready for a great weekend of football, especially for fans in Texas - Thanksgiving day features the Texans in Detroit, RGIII returning to Dallas, and UT gearing up to take on TCU. Since this is a short week I'm going to fire up the predictions tonight to get them in under the wire.
Predictions:
Baylor 37, Texas Tech 37
Iowa State 36, West Virginia 33
Oklahoma 47, Oklahoma State 32
Texas 34, Texas Christian 33
Did I say great weekend of football or what? The ISU-WVU matchup is within 3 points, the Thanksgiving night clash of horned toads vs horned bovines is within 1, and the BUTT Bowl is straight up even. And heck, I'm having a hard time believing that Oklahoma will dominate Bedlam so thoroughly.
I have a suspicion that the spreadsheet's record will suffer this penultimate weekend of the college football season, but we the fans will be the beneficiaries.
Looking at the matchups in a bit more detail, by the numbers Baylor and Tech are pretty evenly matched. Assuming an overtime game, Baylor has scored 3 touchdowns out of 3 on drives starting inside the 35 to date; Texas Tech has scored 7 touchdowns out of 8 drives starting inside the 35 (including that overtime win against TCU)...so even this attempt to ferret out a winner fails to cleanly differentiate the teams. I'm going to go with gut feel here and give the edge to Baylor, primarily for their defensive performance against Kansas State. If that defense shows up to play, I have a hard time seeing how Baylor loses; then again, if that defense had shown up to play all year, Baylor would almost certainly be 7-3 right now at the very worst, and at best could be 9-1. I'm not kidding; that defensive performance was absolutely dominant, and without an interception on the Baylor 1 yard line and a pseudo-onside kick after Baylor's first touchdown recovered by the Wildcats on the Baylor 38, KSU could easily have been held only to 10 points. Baylor will be riding high after last weekend; Texas Tech, after suffering a severe beating at the hands of OSU will be riding almost as low. It will be interesting to see how each team responds to the events of last weekend.
I'd picked ISU to win over WVU a couple of weeks ago when I was prognosticating a possible 8 win season for ISU. The spreadsheet still thinks ISU will win. After the Revelation of Tavon Austin, Running Back, against Oklahoma last week, I'm decidedly less sanguine regarding ISU's chances. As we have all season, we'll let the spreadsheet's prediction stand, however.
Oklahoma looks to have a solid edge against Oklahoma State. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but yet again I am completely confident that OU has both the talent to dominate the game and the potential to let it slip away through mistakes and mental errors. It is Bedlam; either team showing up unprepared would be inexcusable.
The spreadsheet gives only a 1 point edge to Texas over TCU. I think this game will go UT's way, and I personally don't think it will be all that close. Texas has managed to string together a 4 game win streak since being demolished by the Sooners, and done so due to a resurgence of the defense that had, preseason, been expected to be the Longhorns' strength, but which gave up more than 49 points per game in UT's first four conference games. TCU, on the other hand, has struggled to find an identity in an inaugural Big 12 season riddled with losses due to injuries and extracurricular shenanigans.
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