I don’t know does Sagarin factor in the long travel time that Bama had to do from New Orleans to Tuscaloosa? I mean we are taking at least an hour on the charter flight and maybe a 20 minute bus ride.
I’m just sayin.
Edit: Also those are interesting stats that BYU win this past year was ugly.
This stuff is kinda cool SOS and RANKING
Just a few I think are eye catchers.
rank sos
1 ALA. 47
35 UTES 56
112 TDS 74
The Utes had a decided size advantage on Butler, yet couldn’t do anything with it. That was disappointing, especially considering we hace an experienced big man and supposedly a coach noted for coaching bigs. That and the desperation effect and home court advantage of TDS have me concerned about this one. One good thing about the USU game is that Coach will have some teaching points for the week coming out of that one.
Key to a win will be finding a hot hand outside, whether it be Bealer, Bibbins and/or Rawson. Bryant, Childs and TJ Haws each contribute about a quarter of the TDS ohfense, so defensive effort should focus on them and hope no other gets a hot hand like Taylor did for the Aggies.
Pure stats, Sagarin Predictor, with the 3.18 home court advantage, favors TDS by 1.4
Strictly objectively Sagarin predictor calls for a 3 pt win by the Utes if you award 3 point home court advantage to UNLV. Crowd will obviously be for UNLV though its not their usual home court (different lighting, sight lines and such).
For the Utes to win Collette will have to stay out of foul trouble and the Utes find some scoring help from the bench, something they’ve been able to to so far. Coach LarryK has them playing in a disciplined fashion which helped them defeat the more athletic Mizzou Tigers.
In the Sagarin Predictor system it is 2.14. With that credited to the Utes, still a 3.5 dog to WSU in Sagarin’s system.
It’s safe to say we are a solid team. Unfortunately we are the ~40th best team in the country with a schedule that has 8 top 40 teams. Splitting those would be dojng very well and that’s an 8-4 season. With top tier health i still think this could have been a top 20-30 team.
Young and in a rebuilding year we could not afford to lose ecperienc ed guys like Hansen and sunia. With unlikely amazing health this season had a 10 win cieling. But 6-8 wins was always far and away the most probable outcome.
The following quantitive prediction website is run by a TDS alum/fan. He shows USU with a 60-something percent chance of USU winning by about 3.5 points.
http://gmbassett.nfshost.com/football/col_17wk05pred.html
Sagarin Predictor points have USU at 63.38 vs TDS at 66.02, but with a 2.4 pt home advantage that makes it just about even. With a rowdy USU crowd the home field advantage might even be greater than 2.4 pts. I think if USU has some success early it will keep the crowd in it.
All you need to know about fpi is that it is released before the season. There is so many variables and annual turnover in cfb that this is.
Sagarin and s&p are far better analytics
Dunno about match-ups, but one objective way to look at it is Sagarin Predictor. Predicts a 10-point Utah win, including 3 pt home court margin.
Hopefully the Utah team that smoked Cal at home will show up, not the team that lost to Cal in Vegas.
Lady mentioned below how BYU fans seem to believe that Sitake is their savior and how much better he is than Mendenhall.
I don’t understand where they get this idea that Sitake is so much better than Bronco.
In 2015 Bronco led BYU to a 9-4 record against a schedule rated #65 by Sagarin.
In 2016 Sitake led BYU to a 9-4 record against a schedule rated #75 by Sagarin.
BYU fans somehow see this as an improvement over Bronco which is weird when you consider that Sitake inherited a team that returned nearly every starter from 2015 plus the return of Williams and Hill who sat out the previous season due to honor code and injury.
He took virtually the same team and performed the same as, or worse than if you factor in SOS, his predecessor.
Throw in Sitake’s recruiting rankings which are pretty much identical to Bronco’s and I just don’t see what they see. Am I crazy?
