Week 6 Recap

Instead of watching 18 straight hours of college football like I have every prior weekend, I turned wrenches and cracked knuckles fooling around with my tranny fixing my transmission. With that being said, the WVU game recap won't be posted until after I watch the game on DVR at tummystick's house.

Briefly though, since I know this is the only site you guys visit:

Louisville lost to Utah 35-44. At several points in the second half, it looked like the defense was finally going to step up and stop the Utes, but alas, the Cardinals can only manage to play defense 2 plays in a row. Louisville is giving up 444.5 yards/game against competition averaging 310, 474, 260, 316, 350 (Murray St offensive stats not listed). Their opponents are averaging approximately 103 more yards per game against Louisville than their seasonal average. WVU is averaging 504 yards per game so far this season. Carnage? Perhaps.

A deeper look, however, at the defensive troubles at Louisville suggests that they are capable against the run. The problems seem to stem mostly from the inability to stop deep passes. Adjustments by the Cards to compensate for the deep pass then opens up the run game. Unfortunately, WVU has yet to demonstrate a willingness to take shots downfield (caveat: I haven't seen the Syracuse game yet). Regardless, I'm still anticipating 1100 combined yards and over 100 points when the Cards come to Morgantown.

South Florida didn't falter after their big win last week. The Bulls beat FAU 35-23 and moved up to #5 in both polls. A lot of talk over the last week has concerned whether USF can win out and if so, will they be in the BCS game. Well, we Bastards are of the opinion that at some point, the questionable USF offense will fail them at least once this season. The biggest remaining test for the Bulls appears to be Cincinatti. I suspect the Bearcats to force enough turnovers to be able to squeak out a close win in Tampa on November 3rd with a combined score of less than 30.

Speaking of Cinci, their resume continued to improve with a convincing win over the Rutgers in Puskateway 28-23. The turning point in the game occurred at the end of the 3rd quarter when the Bearcats scored 14 points in 19 or so seconds. Mike Teel, who had entered the game as one of the nation's leaders in efficiency was intercepted 3 times (Cinci forced 4 total turnovers) and Ray Rice rushed for only 94 yards. Cincinatti continues to lead the nation in turnover margin at +2.5/game. (WVU falls in at +0.83/game and USF is at +1/game.)

And in case you were in an alcohol induced coma all weekend, USC lost to Stanford and Florida lost to LSU. W00t!

Completely baseless Big East BCS projections: USF, Cinci and WVU each end up with one loss (WVU beats Cinci who then beats USF) with WVU getting the BCS nod with the highest BCS ranking, where we'll play Hawaii.

Rutgers loses twice more (USF, WVU) to come in fourth but bowl eligible.

UConn currently has 4 1A victories requiring 2 more to become bowl eligible. Their season becomes decisively more difficult from here out but the Huskies will probably win over Syracuse thus requiring one upset from the set of UL, WVU, USF, Rutgers and Cinci. Most likely: they score 154 points against UL to win by 3.

Louisville will struggle to become bowl eligible. They currently have two 1A wins (NC State and Mid Tenn) meaning they'll have to win 4 of their next 6. During that stretch, they play Pitt and UConn, two teams they should beat even with their awful D, but the other four games are against Cinci, WVU, USF and the Rutgers.

Again, please discuss in the comments.