By
Dave
Hershorin
November 7, 2006
The highly anticipated matchup of Big
East unbeatens Louisville and West Virginia lived up
to all expectations and turned out to be one of the
most competitive and entertaining games of the year
so far. It’s been since 1971 that three
teams from one conference went this late into the season
unscathed (SEC – ‘Bama, Georgia and Auburn).
The game was close at the half (Cardinals up 16-14)
due to some key defensive stops by WVU that held UL’s
high-octane offense to three FGs that easily could have
been TDs. But the game pivoted on Mountaineer sophomore
RB phenom Steve Slaton’s two fumbles on two consecutive
carries early in the third quarter, the second of which
was returned 13 yards by junior LB Malik Jackson for
a TD. Heisman hopeful Slaton was having a fabulous game
(finished with 156 yards and a rushing TD on 18 carries,
and had three catches for 74 yards) until he was benched
(though he came back in the fourth quarter) due to his
fumblitous. Brian Brohm found his receivers wide open
all night to finish with 354 yards on 19-of-26 passing.
It was a slugfest that Louisville just seemed to want
to win more. But by no means did it clarify Louisville
as a worthy top five team, even though they remain such
and jumped Florida in the polls. Besides the six fumbles,
UL’s run defense allowed 318 yards and five ground
scores, hardly top five numbers. In the same breath
is mentioned WVU’s porous secondary and covering
skills. Regardless of whichever team eventually won,
neither made the Big East look like it has produced
an elite program for the 2006 season. This all gets
back to the strength of schedule issue – by our
standards, Louisville has the 71st toughest slate (out
of all 119) and WVU has the weakest schedule in the
conference at 95th. The Redbird’s toughest game
before this one was at home against a dismal 5-4 Miami
squad, while the Mountaineer’s only foes with
winning records had been East Carolina and Maryland.
Both defenses were overmatched, and it wound up a scoring
frenzy that entertained more than it impressed. Does
Louisville have a good enough offense to outscore either
Michigan or Ohio State? Maybe, especially seeing how
much trouble the Wolverines had in winning 34-26 at
home against a 3-7 Ball State squad with the 117th total
defense. But I think that the Buckeyes are solid enough
to keep Brohm in check. If the Cardinals remain unbeaten,
I do believe they deserve the shot against OSU in the
BCS championship. But contrary to Herbstreit and May
(as well as many other college football prognosticators),
so does Rutgers if they emerge from regular season play
perfect. Given that they are in the same conference,
the Scarlet Knights still have to beat both WVU and
UL, so they have the exact same level of competition
and therefore deserve the exact same ends as either
of these two if they can run the pedestrian Big East
gauntlet. Big time guys on national TV need to realize
that they influence voters – whom are a huge part
of the BCS formula – and need to give the same
due respect to programs that, though they may come out
of nowhere, have earned the right to be considered amongst
the nation’s best in ‘06. Prior performances
don’t/shouldn’t have any bearing on how
well teams are doing this season, so just because Rutgers
lingers in many minds as a conference doormat doesn’t
mean they should be penalized by the national media
for years past. It will be a travesty if a perfect
Rutgers squad is kept out of the BCS finale.
That said, I feel that Louisville wins this Thursday’s
matchup of undefeated Big East teams, though I am pulling
for the home team so that we can see just how bad it
can get before a long-overdue playoff is finally put
in motion.
The SEC featured two mild upsets as
Kentucky took Georgia down another peg 24-20 in Lexington,
and Mississippi State broke its 23-game conference road
slide at Bryant-Denny in Tuscaloosa by ripping the Tide
24-16. Anyone who follows college ball has seen UGA
continually disappoint more and more this campaign,
and freshman QB Matt Stafford had three INTs to prove
he isn’t yet the solution for their offensive
woes. The Cats chased three Dawg passes down while UK
counterpart Andre Woodson was 23-of-32 with two TDs.
Head coach Sylvester Croom used defense to limit Bama
to 19-of-39 passing for just 187 yards and two INTs
as well as a measly 4-of-14 third-down conversion rate.
The embattled UA-alumni had never beaten his former
school, and is now 9-23 overall in his third struggling
year at Starkville. Tennessee, which had recently been
5-1 against LSU, blew a 17-7 third quarter lead and
the game 28-24. The Tigers lost the turnover battle
4-1, but they held the ball over 22:00 more than the
Vols to easily outgain them by 230 yards. While this
may not be considered much of an upset, then-No.8 Tennessee
was on enough of a roll that they were vying for a wildcard
BCS birth until Saturday’s narrow defeat. LSU
– with road losses to Auburn and Florida –
proved why they were the nation’s best two-loss
team and now reside one spot ahead of UT at No.12. But
ala Rutgers, how does SEC West leading Arkansas, 26-20
winners at South Carolina, rate so poorly in the polls?
The No.11 Hogs lost only their opener with USC and have
the conference’s lone perfect record, yet they
still sit six slots behind one-loss Auburn,
a team they spanked 27-10 at Jordan-Hare. The
Razorbacks will soon be tested by LSU and Tennessee
at home, so I guess pollsters are waiting before anointing
Nutt’s latest underdogs. But just on what they
have done already, Arkansas deserves to be grouped with
the Tigers and Gators in the middle of the top 10. Oh,
that wacky SEC and those even wackier pollsters.
Who’d of thunk it? With just three
games to go, Maryland and Wake Forest are the frontrunners
in the ACC’s Atlantic division. Then-No.22 Wake
made a statement by beating a steady (then No.16) Boston
College 21-14 at home, while the then-unranked Terrapins
went into Death Valley and won 13-12. While neither
team seems dominant, both have done enough to only have
one conference loss and the inside track for getting
to Jacksonville (the site of this year’s ACC Championship
game December 2). Appropriately enough, Maryland
hosts the Demon Deacons November 25 in a possible winner-goes-to-the-title
game matchup, but who could have guessed that
it would be the ACC regular season game of the year?
Ok, ok…the Terps still have to go to Boston and
survive at home against the Hurricanes while WF has
the Noles in Tallahassee and a home tilt with Virginia
Tech before either can say anything about possibly being
conference champs. And with BC 3-2 and Clemson 4-3 in
league play, no one is a lock just yet with so much
action still to take place. The Ramblin’ Wreck
seems to have their Coastal side sewn up with only North
Carolina and Duke (both winless in ACC play) remaining
and a one game lead over a Virginia Tech team they’ve
already defeated. But who Tech faces is still as up
in the air as a Ray Guy punt. In 53 years of ACC football,
Wake has only won one league title (trivia question
– Can you name the year the Deacons won their
ACC title? See answer below) while No.22 Maryland
has won it seven times, most recently in 2001. In only
their second ACC season, Boston College has never won
one, let alone a Big East title in their 14 affiliated
years there, meaning they have never won any conference
since they were an independent before being in the Big
East. GT shared a title in 1998 with FSU, but ostensibly
were second since the Noles beat them 34-7 that year.
Since joining the league in 1983, Tech’s only
legit ACC championship came in 1990 under Bobby Ross,
the same year they won a share of the national title.
In a year when big dogs Florida State, Miami and Virginia
Tech are struggling just to finish over .500, the door
is wide open for any of these teams that has never even
thought of having a chance at the BCS to break through.
Just three years into the ACC-Big East merger, who’d
of thunk it?
Nebraska answered the question as to
who will face Texas in the Big 12 title game. The Cornhuskers
turned two first half Missouri INTs into TDs while scoring
on four of their first six possessions to go out 27-3
and ultimately win 34-20. The matchup of these two (in
conference) two-loss teams gave winning Nebraska a proverbial
two game lead in the North division with two games to
go. NU has to lose against both A&M and Colorado
while Mizzou has to win out for the Tigers to have a
shot. Kansas State is also alive, but similarly has
to win against both Texas this weekend and in-state
rival Kansas as the Huskers lose twice. For those of
you who think Texas is again a lock to win against Nebraska,
you must still be riding on the Longhorn’s
2005 national title coattails. UT barely pulled
out a 22-20 win in Lincoln a little over two weeks ago.
Senior signal-caller Zac Taylor has his Huskers averaging
25 more yards of offense than Texas, though the ‘Black
Shirts’ are also allowing close to 60 yards more
defensively. Many forget the 2003 Big 12 title game,
when three-loss Kansas State pulled out a 35-7 win over
heavily-favored No.1 Oklahoma. Even though Texas is
led by the nation’s second-ranked passer in Colt
McCoy, he is a freshman and wasn’t up to the task
when the Longhorns played their other tough opponent
(Ohio State in a 24-7 loss at home). The December 2nd
matchup, played at Arrowhead Stadium, marks the league’s
11th title game and the longest running conference championship
currently in I-A. Texas can tie Oklahoma for the most
crowns if they can capture their third title.
Michigan may have narrowly survived
Ball State’s upset bid, but their smelly 34-26
escape didn’t seem to affect their poll standings.
The Cardinals were up 9-7 entering the second quarter,
and highlights from Ann Arbor were all over every network
break-in that gave a scoring update. The Wolverines
beat them statistically, but the early proceedings prove
that this team is vulnerable in more ways than one.
Michigan’s front four on defense is awesome
and has provided a pass rush that leads the country
in sacks (35). Another way Michigan seems impenetrable
is via ground attack. They allowed BSU 47 net yards
on 22 carries, and so far this year have allowed a total
of 303 rushing yards on 229 carries. That is an average
of 1.32 per attempt and 30.3 per game. Since 1999, only
five schools have allowed less than two yards per carry
all season long – Mississippi State (1999, 1.83ypc),
UAB (2001, 1.89), TCU (2002, 1.98), USC (2003, 1.84)
and Ohio State (2003, 1.95) – and this year Texas
is also allowing under two per try (1.87). But if Michigan
can keep it up, they will post the best run defense
since Penn State set the I-A record in 1947 by allowing
only 17 rushing yards per game. The Nittany Lions finished
ranked fourth in the AP that year, a number UM would
like to surpass as they have a shot at playing for the
national title if they can get past the Buckeyes in
Columbus November 18th.
Lagniappe
Florida
State pitched one of the weekend’s three shutouts
by doing Virginia 33-0 at home. The other bagels came
from Auburn (27-0 vs. Arkansas State) and USC (42-0
at Stanford)…Virginia Tech’s 17-10 win over
hapless Miami means the road team has now won the last
three meetings. Frank Beamer’s squads have seemingly
overcome their November jinx, going 6-1 since 2004 after
going 5-7 in the 11th month from 2001-03…Junior
Colt Brennan is nothing short of amazing. The Hawai’i
QB is on a burning pace with 39 TDs, which set a new
school record (Timmy Chang had the old record of 38
in 2004) but will fall short of David Klingler’s
1990 single-season record of 54. He also leads
the nation in passing percentage (72.94%), and with
only six INTs, is atop the passer charts with a 190.0
efficiency rating. Texas Tech’s Graham Harrell
has 160 more yards than Brennan, but needed 129 more
pass attempts to get there. Brennan has had his 7-2
Warriors receiving AP votes for three weeks now…Stanford
ranks last in the Pac 10 in every major team statistic,
both offensively and defensively. They have the nation’s
worst scoring offense (9.2 points per game), worst rushing
defense (239.1 ypg allowed), are the second-worst for
sacks allowed (4.11 per game) and have the third-worst
TO-ratio (-1.22 per game). I sure hope coach Walt Harris
is at least graduating his guys, but at a fine learning
institution like Stanford, he probably doesn’t
push them in that area, either…Washington
has allowed opponents to convert 22 field goals this
season, the most in the land. Illinois is second with
16…One of three teams in I-A without a win, Florida
International still ranks 11th in pass defense and 17th
for total defense…Wisconsin has allowed only three
passing TDs so far. The Badgers are the only team to
allow under five yards per pass attempt (4.6) and under
nine per completion (8.99)…Minnesota, hobbling
along at 4-6, won its first Big Ten game of the year
63-26 over Indiana and scored more points than any Gopher
team over a Big Ten opponent in one game since 1916’s
67-0 win over Iowa…Illini junior J Leman continued
his tackling clinic by registering 19 tackles (3.5 for
loss and a sack) and a forced fumble as his team came
the closest so far in ‘06 to beating No.1 Ohio
State. Leman has had double-digit tackle totals
in eight of Illinois’ ten games…Junior
Erin Henderson had 18 tackles and a forced fumble for
Maryland in their 13-12 win at Clemson…Oklahoma
is doing fine even with all-world RB Adrian Peterson
out with a broken collar bone. Junior Allen Patrick,
who recorded a team high 37.5 inch vertical jump in
spring drills, has 440 rushing yards since getting his
chance to finally start the last three games...the answer
to the trivia question above: Wake Forest won
the ACC title in 1970 by going 5-1 in league play, though
they were 6-5 overall under Cal Stoll…
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