Quick hit thoughts on a big weekend of football. FYI, Baseball is now officially dead to me, as not only are the White Sox done, but my fantasy team was just ousted in the first round of the playoffs. Anyway, here's what I thought of the weekend on the college gridiron...
- Houston stunned Oklahoma State 45-35; I thought Oklahoma State would have a letdown game, but I didn't think they'd actually lose. They had a chance down 3 with the ball late, but Dez Bryant cramped up on a slant route, Robinson threw it anyway, and Houston picked it and took it to the house. The real reason Oklahoma State lost though is that they didn't show up until the 3rd quarter; when your defense is as bad as theirs is, you just can't spot teams 24-7 leads. Oklahoma State got back into it and took the lead at 28-24, but they essentially needed their offense to score every time they had the ball in the 2nd half. Real tough loss, but an entertaining game all around, highlighted by Dez Bryant's electrifying punt return TD.
- Michigan beat ND 38-34; I actually didn't see much of this game because I was watching the Houston-OK State game, but from everything I heard this game was wild. I saw most of the 4th quarter of it, but really I just couldn't get too excited for this game; I still don't think either of these teams are that good. Also I didn't take this game in my picks from Friday because I really had no idea what to expect-- I didn't think ND was nearly as good as they looked last week, and I wanted to see Michigan again because I didn't trust a blowout win over Western Michigan. Watching this game intermittently basically confirmed what I thought going in; they are two evenly matched teams each probably destined for 8-4 records. At least this ought to shut Lou Holth up about ND going to the title game.
- WV beat ECU 35-20; everyone seems to be sleeping on West Virginia, but Jarrett Brown threw the ball all over the field in this game, something WV just could not do consistently last year. They've got a huge game at Auburn this week, and Auburn looked solid in their dismantling of Mississippi State Saturday--let's just say it was a mild improvement over the 3-2 slugfest from last year. I'm telling you though, if West Virginia can win at Auburn, this is a real sleeper to get to the BCS title game-- I think the only two teams in the Big East that can beat WV are Pitt and Cinci, and I do not trust Pitt at all.
- TCU pounded Virginia 30-14, and it wasn't even that close. Despite having a soulless ginger for a quarterback, TCU is a good team, and I cannot wait to bet on them to pound the heinously overrated Utah. And Virginia is very bad. As I said Friday-- Al Groh, Dead Man Walking.
- My upset special of Buffalo over Pitt didn't exactly come to fruition, although Buffalo did put up a shit ton of yards. Evidently their defense did not get the memo that gametime was at noon Saturday.
- Similarly, the Georgia/South Carolina under may have been the worst bet I've ever made in my life. They had covered the under with 12 minutes to go in the second quarter. This game is why college football is so great, and so maddeningly frustrtating all at once. Last week each of these offenses looked absolutely pathetic and useless; Georgia could only muster 10 points on Oklahoma State, and USC scored 7-- on a 14 yard drive no less-- on NC State. This week? Oklahoma State surrenders 45 points to Houston, while Georgia rings up 41 on South Carolina. I caught a bit of this game when I wasn't watching USC-Ohio State, and it looked absolutely wild. Of course, I now have absolutely no read on either of these teams and won't be betting on or against them for a couple of weeks.
- I don't want to talk about the end of the UNC-UConn game. It looks all poised to go to OT where UNC might be able to sneak out a rat cover, and then they get a fucking game winning safety. Unreal. And even though UNC won, they really shouldn't be too proud; they looked miserable on offense for most of the game, and UConn is really not very good. A win's a win I guess though.
- Missouri beat Bowling Green 27-20 in what was actually a pretty good game. I didn't notice the line on this was 20 freaking points until Saturday night, so I bet Bowling Green but didn't include it in my picks Friday. Missouri was primed for a letdown here after playing out of their minds against Illinois, and Bowling Green was coming off an impressive blowout of Troy. This game also may be an indication that Illinois is still very bad. Poor Ron Zook; things looked so promising a couple of years ago there.
- And the big game of the day really didn't disappoint, as USC beat Ohio State 18-15. I pretty much hit the nail on the head of how this game was going to play out-- low scoring, relatively conservative football. However, I do have this to say about Pete Carroll-- the man has clearly built a tremendous program and is a great recruiter. But why in God's name does he not feed the ball to Joe McKnight more? He did this when Reggie Bush was there too-- remember how he was on the bench for that 4th and 1 play against Texas in the title game? On the game winning drive, they finally found ways to get McKnight the ball both rushing and receiving, and he essentially carried them for that whole drive. Barkley also was pretty impressive and poised on that drive, but as many people (myself included) have said before, being the QB for USC isn't all that hard with that offensive line and all those playmakers around you. Plus, he was pretty miserable for about 90% of the game, and Barkley wouldn't have even been in position for that game winning drive if USC's defense didn't play so great all game. Again, these are the perks of quarterbacking USC.
And if you're Ohio State? You have to be absolutely kicking yourself for blowing that game. I can't really pinpoint one bad play or one bad decision, but overall I just felt like Tressel's trademark conservative playcalling nipped them in the ass. Pryor didn't play particularly well, but the one area he seemed to excel in Saturday night was throwing the ball down the field. Neither him nor Boom Herron ran the ball with any success, and Pryor wasn't accurate on the short stuff, but he did average over 16 yards a completion-- and they weren't the 2 yard pass, 14 yard run after catch types, but mostly were post patterns down the middle. I understand not wanting to stop the clock with his incompletions, but at some point you've got to think USC was going to put a drive together, especially considering that before the last drive their other TD drive spanned a whole 2 yards. You can't expect your defense to completely shut down USC for the entire game, and at some point you've got to let your playmakers try to do something for you offensively.
Back later today with some thoughts on the opening weekend of the NFL.
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