Sagarin, S&P+ Pac12 South CHAMPS Edition

[shakeitsugaree]

Sagarin has us ranked 14 (no change), S&P+ has us at 12 (+3). Our performance against Colorado really upped our profile in the S&P+ system

I would like to direct your attention to the percentile performance of the offense against UW: 13. Now, the offense hadn’t really found its legs yet at that point in the season, but I would submit some other statistics about the Husky defense to consider (all numbers are S&P+ rankings):

Defense S&P+ 9
Rushing Defense S&P+ 11
Passing Deffense S&P+ 33

Some other ‘deep’ stats of interest (find definitions here)

IsoPPP 7
Marginal Explosiveness 5
Points per Scoring Opportunity 5
Rushing Marginal Efficiency 15
Passing Marginal Explosiveness 2

Bottom line: UW’s defense is good. Like, caused us to have our worst offensive performance of the year, good. The analytics are basically calling the Apple Cup a toss up – so, who are we cheering for?

On the surface, I think most Utah fans like our defense against the Husky offense – that is a better match up for the defense than Wazzu’s offense. However, given the state of our offense – 2nd string QB and RB, with limited live game experience – I like our chances against Wazzu better than UW. Here are the S&P+ stats regarding Wazzu’s defense:

Defense S&P+ 43
Rushing Defense S&P+ 81
Passing Defense S&P+ 13

I think Wazzu’s weaknesses (rushing defense) play into our strengths (rushing offense S&P+ 22) better than UW’s weaknesses (passing offense, if 33 can be considered ‘weak’).

Sagarin predicts we would lose to either of the Washington schools on a neutral field, while S&P+ predicts we lose to UW by a very small margin (0.7), but beat Wazzu by a bigger margin (1.6).

So, I’ll be cheering for Wazzu (full disclosure: I am currently a WSU graduate student). What do you think? Who are you cheering for in the Apple Cup?

[noneyadb]

Without Moss I don’t think the run  game is good enough to be depended on vs a team like UW. However Shelley adds a threat that Huntley lacked at, the deep pass. Look for Shelley and Dixon to light it up this weekend, and fingers crossed next week whoever they play!