Diaries

     This week on the board, there were two posts that caused me to reminisce about past road trips. I already commented on the Illinois trip. I saved my Iowa road trip story for this diary, since we played Iowa yesterday. My first road trip to Iowa was actually an air trip. My Dad’s friend was a pilot and owned a four-seated airplane. His friend and our co-pilot for the trip was a Minister (insert God was our co-pilot joke here.) We experienced a fair amount of turbulence over Kalamazoo, and I tossed a fair amount of cookies over said city. Four-seater turbulence >>> Regular airplane turbulence. When you can look out the window and see the tires floating in mid-air, you realize you are basically hovering over the earth in a flying car. The contents of your stomach don’t stand a chance of staying put. Anyway, I recovered as the Minister convinced me that the best thing for an upset stomach was a Ginger Ale. That may be because that’s the only thing they had on hand, but to this day I still drink a Ginger Ale whenever I fly.

    As we approached the stadium, we saw the Iowa Hawkeye mascot. I don’t think I had ever seen a mascot before*, at least not up close, so I asked Dad to get a picture. However, I thought the chances of a Michigan fan getting a photo with the Iowa mascot were slim. So I closed my jacket and walked up to the mascot. I shook his hand, er, talon, and just as Dad was ready to take the shot you see below, I opened my jacket to reveal my Michigan T-Shirt. One point for sneaky Michigan fans everywhere. Note to Dave Brandon: this experience did not cause me to question my Michigan fandom in the least.

A young ST3 with the Hawkeye mascot

* Other firsts on that trip include seeing tight ends stand up. That Hayden Fry was such an innovator.

Link: http://www.mgoblue.com/sports/m-footbl/stats/110511aaa.html  

Burst of Impetus

• Obviously, the two turnovers were huge. One took away a potential seven points, and one gave Iowa three points. In an 8 point game, that was the difference.
• Iowa tried a quick snap on 4^th and 1 and we stopped them. I was hoping that Ferentz was going to turn to his OC and say, “See, I told you going for it on 4^th and 2 inches was a dumb idea,” and never go for it again. Alas, they went for it later in the game, converted, and went on to score.

Trash Cans Full of Dirt

• Thomas Gordon had zero tackles. There was a board post on this topic yesterday. I don’t understand how you take your 2^nd leading tackler out of the lineup. I get that his getting a lot of tackles is part of the position he plays, but he sure looks like one of our best 11 defenders to me. Additionally, Gordon is listed at 208 pounds on the roster, and Woolfolk is 191. When you are playing against Coker and those corn-fed hawkeyes, I want MOAR BEEF on defense. I’m not going to complain about Woolfolk. I understand wanting to get an experienced, 5^th year senior, and team leader on the field, but if I was Gordon and lost my job due to intangibles I’d be “upset”. (The actual word is “pissed,” but I recently learned Mom is reading my diaries. If you notice a change in tone, that’s the reason.) 
• Bill Simmons often writes about a VP of Common Sense. I think a VP of Common Sense would tell you not to take your 2^nd leading tackler out of the lineup, since tackling is sort of important.
• Coker had 132 yards on 29 carries for a 4.6 average, numbers that should have been average enough to get us a victory. I estimated that he gained 58 yards just by falling forward (that’s 2 yards per carry.) That’s a big man. Some day, we’ll have 5^th year senior linebackers that stand up 230 pound running backs, but until we do, we’ve just got to live with the YAC. Nothing against Ryan and Morgan, but I think they would agree that 3 years from now they are going to be a lot stronger.
• After Iowa scored their first touchdown, I found out Andy Rooney had passed away. I will present the next bullet in his memory.
• Do you ever notice how often our opponents score on their first drive? I hate that.
• And now back to your regularly schedule diary.
• Demens was the leading tackler with 11. A bunch of guys chipped in with 6. 6 TFLs were spread among 6 tacklers, including a big 8 yard sack by Heininger.
• We had 0 QHs. If QH is “quarterback hurry” like I think it is, the inability to get to Vandenberg on a regular basis may have been the defensive story of the game. He had time to survey the field and went 14-21.

Filthy

• Can I leave this section blank?
• Touss was filthy for a little bit, but then he reverted to “china in a bull shop” mode. My first half notes are littered with “Tousses”.  Touss is so much fun to say, why oh why can’t he be a 1000 yard rusher?
• Touss finished with 58 yards on 16 carries. That should have been enough to enable the play action, but a combination of dropped passes, poor throws, and suffocating Hawkeye defense (I mean that literally, I think they choked a few of our WRs on more than a couple slant routes) lead to a 17-37 day for Denard. That was filthy in the original meaning of the word.
• B. Binns for Iowa had 3 pass breakups. Ugh.
• When Touss got hurt, why no Shaw? We basically just abandoned a running game that while not at last week’s level, was still working enough to move the chains.
• On Denard’s TD pass, he had 9 seconds in the pocket to throw the ball. That’s filthy, I guess.

Big John R. Studd Referee Section

• The officials for the game are listed in the box score. None of them is a friend of mine. I’ll leave it at that.
• We were penalized 3 times for 20 yards, and Iowa was penalized 5 times for 29 yards. It was as if the refs forget that they had flags that they could throw. For all the folks who are in the “let them play” camp, well, this was a game for you. I prefer the, “call it if you see it” camp.
• I don’t want to blame the refs for the loss. They were at least consistent, and that’s one thing I ask for. I say this because the interception and the last play of the game were very similar, an Iowa DB was hanging all over our receiver before the ball got there and no flag was thrown. Brady Hoke agrees with me on the first play (ref: his halftime interview), Dave Pasch agrees with me on the second (ref: his post-game comments) and my wife agrees with me on both, “How is that not passing interference?” She doesn’t watch much football, but she can recognize “passing interference” when she sees it. (She also thought the non-touchdown was a touchdown, FWIW.)
• I ask for consistency because then you at least have a chance to modify your game plan. When it became clear that the Iowa DBs were going to be allowed to play physical, why do you throw a slant on the last play of the game?
• I don’t blame the refs for the interception because Denard really shouldn’t have thrown into quadruple coverage. That’s usually a bad idea.
• I have to question what was so controvertible about Hemingway’s catch that prevented the replay official from overturning the original call. Surely, 70,000 Hawkeye fans would controvertiblize an overturn, but he caught the ball in one hand, brought it in to his other hand, got a knee down, and the ball was still above the ground. How is that not a touchdown? Granted, I’m biased, but if you asked 100 un-biased observers if that was a touchdown, I’m guessing at least 95 say yes, and the other 5 are morons.

 San Diego 49ers

• Hemingway had a nice jumping catch, but that was offset by a drop on the first drive. We really needed to score on that first drive to let them know the Minnesota game was not an aberration. Instead, they stayed in it and gained confidence.
• Hemingway lead us with 5 catches for 64 yards.
• Nine different receivers caught passes this week, including 2 by Kelvin Grady who doubled his season total.

• The meme of the week was that Jeremy Gallon can dunk. We will also remember this as the week Mitch McGary committed to UofM, and I suppose he can also dunk. But since I’m in the mood to share photos from my youth, I can report that your faithful Box Scorespondent can also dunk, and I have a picture to prove it. Officials from Guinness measured the height of the rim to be exactly 10 feet (from somewhere on that gently sloping driveway.)

Is that Jeremy Gallon or ST3? Unlike Brady Hoke, I have worn red in the past, but that was a University of Detroit T-shirt.

Hexadecimal Points

• Iowa tried the non-traditional uniform thing this week, but they stopped at the helmet. The Hawkeye was displayed in red, white, and blue, and the decal on the other side was removed to honor the war dead.
• Hawthorne and Cavanaugh each had two tackles.

Derpan Meyer

• Dave Pasch redeemed himself in my eyes with his post-game comments. Yeah, Dave, that should have been a penalty. Oh well.
• I like how Spielman called out the Iowa DB who kept putting his hand up to his ear. Spielman basically said, play the game and if you do well the crowd will cheer for you. You don’t have to beg for applause. Spielman is so old-school, you can’t help but like the guy, except for the fact that he hates us.
• Spielman said that Touss added Zest to our offense. I wasn’t sure if I was watching a football game, or a commercial for a shampoo, but I think his comment was correct.

Random, as Yet Unnamed, Bullets

• I’m learning that writing these are not as fun after losses.
• This could also be titled, look at the boxscore and tell me who won.
• We had 22 first downs to their 15.
• We had 323 yards to their 302.
• We ran 75 plays to their 56.
• Our net rushing was 127 yards, theirs was 131.
• So far, pretty even, right?
• Net yards per punt, 33.8 (us), 36.6 them.
• Net yards per kickoff, 47.5 for us, 34.6 for them. Whoo-hoo.
• They had two guys with double digit tackles, Bernstine with 15 and Nielsen with 13. How do we not win that game? I had no idea Bernstine even played and yet he ended up with 15 tackles. I guess I focus more on our team.
• At one point in the game, they were 1 for 6 on third down, yet had scored 17 points. How did that happen? They ended up 4 for 12 on third down to our 7 for 16. How did we lose this game? Oh yeah, turnovers. (Notice I didn’t blame the refs here?) Actually, the reason we lost the game was red zone efficiency. They were 3 for 3 with 3 touchdowns, we were 3 for 5 with 2 TDs and a FG. You’ve got to make the most of your opportunities. They did. We didn’t. End of story.

Original Picture Pages here.  Analysis courtesy Brian, as usual.  Now the slo-mo works but I'm back to non-lower-case lower case letters. Whatever.

Setup: Borges is setting up 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situations.  On the play prior to this one, Michigan sent Hemingway, Roundtree, and Grady to varying depths along the left sideline.  The corner stepped up to take away Hemingway (running the middle depth of the three routes), but Roundtree beat the safety to the outside for a big gain.  This play is designed to get one man open no matter which way the corner plays. 

Wha'hoppon: Gallon is split left, Denard in the slot right, and Hemingway split right.  Pre-snap, Junior motions in, and the defensive reaction reveals zone.  On the snap, Gallon runs, well, I'm not sure - it might be a streak, or a fly, or a post, or a post-corner (#7).  One safety steps up into a robber zone and the other forms a Cover-3 with the corners.  Gallon's corner runs with him and the safety comes over.  Hemingway runs what starts out as a deep in, I think (#6?), but continues it all the way across the field, getting free of the robber and being wide open in the spot vacated by the corner.  The LBs are occupied by the threat of the end-around first, then a potential Denard wheel route second, which prevents them from dropping into the passing lane.  Gardner finishes both fakes, has a quick lunch, tweets "no1 w/in 10yds of me lol wide open" and proceeds to throw into double coverage towards Gallon.  Armpunt.

Full YouTubage at http://youtu.be/9gADYsUMVN8.

Tailgating

Scrape the frost off the car and pour some hot coffee if you're headed out early! We'll be sitting in the 30s until 8am, winds out of the southeast at 10mph- and climbing. 45 degrees by 10am, but it'll still feel about 5 degrees cooler with the wind chill. By 10am, winds will have gone up to a steady 15mph with gusts up to 20mph (loose paper blows about, small twigs scatter across the ground).

Kickoff

Remember it's an 11 o-clock CT start! Partly sunny skies and 49 degrees for the start of the game. Winds will have picked up to 15mph, gusts up to 20mph (small trees sway), still out of the southeast.

Halftime

Warming up just a bit with more clouds building in- but no rain! Mostly cloudy and 52 by halftime, and those SE winds are still climbing. 17mph winds, complete with gusts up to 25mph (empty plastic garbage cans tip over, you can hear the wind "whistling").

Post-Game

Hitting 54 degrees around game's end with mostly sunny skies. SSE winds continue with a steady 17-18mph flow, and gusts remain up to 25mph (you need to use effort to walk against the wind). Winds will stay up through the night into early afternoon Sunday. Temperatures stay mild with all that warm air streaming in- staying in the 50s throughout the entire night, just touching in the upper 40s before Sunday's sunrise. Cloud cover decreases in the evening for partly cloudy skies, which will continue into tomorrow- dry, but windy, conditions whether you're leaving for home after the game or Sunday.

Christina Burkhart is a meteorologist for NBC/ABC in Traverse City, MI. She grew up in Ann Arbor and associates Saturdays with Michigan football. Go Blue!!

Here are the standings.  If you’ve forgotten your username or have any other questions email mgoblog.pick.six@gmail.com

Wisconsin continued its slide down the rankings.  Michigan State and Clemson pick up a loss and drop out of the Top 10.  The leaderboard was full of people who had picked those three teams last week so this caused a big shakeup in the Pick Six standings.

Elsewhere in the country, the Texas schools, A&M and Tech, both dropped out of the rankings.  That leaves Houston as the only school from Texas ranked in the AP poll.  I wonder when the last time there was no Texas school ranked.  Is it possible we’ll see that happen this year?  Probably not.  Who is going to beat Houston?

Georgia Tech and Auburn get back into the rankings, so no new unranked teams this week.  Southern Miss is hanging on right at the edge of the poll.  A weak team could drop out and put USM into the poll for the first time since 2004.

Individual Ballot Analysis

Despite all the losses last week, the perfect ballot hasn’t actually changed teams.  It is still LSU, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, Michigan State, Southern Cal and Clemson.  It has dropped from 109 points last week to 97 points this week though.

We have two new leaders this week.  AMazinBlue and orobs climbed up to first place with slightly different entries.  They both have Alabama, Stanford, Arkansas and Michigan as their unranked team.  In Group D and E they made different choices though.  AMazinBlue chose Michigan State and West Virginia which was worth the same amount as orobs’ choice of Georgia and Southern Cal.

At the complete opposite end of the leaderboard, there are now five people who have the absolute lowest possible number of points.  All five picked Oklahoma for 19 points and all their other picks are unranked.

Judging your Picks

Last week the MGoBlogosphere had the unfortunate shame of having a worse median ballot than a completely random one.  Fortunately this week we’ve improved to the same as a random ballot.

Someone who made their picks completely randomly would expect to earn 51 points.  The median of the Pick Six entries is 52 points and the mean is 51 points.

Weekly Brian Watch

I have not given an update on how Brian has been doing in a while.  It happened to coincide with a slide down the rankings

He now has undefeated Boise State and Stanford with one good win (USC) between them but no really good wins.  Then Wisconsin, West Virginia and Texas all have two losses with one combined good win (Nebraska) and Notre Dame has 3 losses with one good win (Michigan State).  That is the perfect recipe for a completely average rank.

Games to Watch

#10 South Carolina at #8 Arkansas

(7:15 pm on ESPN)

Two of the 3 best second-tier SEC teams face each other.  This should probably be won handily by Arkansas handily now that South Carolina is without Marcus Lattimore and their QB situation has been Spurriered.  But who knows, Arkansas didn’t look that great against Vanderbilt last week.

#17 Kansas State at #3 Oklahoma State

(8:00 pm on ABC/ESPN2)

After starting out 7-0 Kansas State will probably lose their second game.  It’s entirely possible they’ll lose their final 5 games of the season.  Next week home against Texas A&M is probably their only chance to not have at least a 4 game losing streak.  They play at Texas and home against Iowa State after that.

#6 Oregon at Washington

(10:30 pm on FSN)

If Oregon can get by Washington who was briefly ranked two weeks ago then they’ll set up a Pac-12 showdown with #4 Stanford next week.  If Washington somehow pulls the upset then they’ll shoot back into the rankings probably around #20.

Am I forgetting anything?  Oh, I guess maybe you could watch

#1 LSU at #2 Alabama

(8:00 pm on CBS)

The second-favorite choice from group A (Alabama was on 33% of the entries) facing the least favorite choice (LSU was on 3%).  It probably won’t actually affect the standings very much though.  The loser will still be in the Top 10 unless it’s a blowout and probably will stay in the Top 5 if it’s close.

Kick it off like we always do…

The early touchdown saw the unadjusted numbers drop below 30% but the spread adjustment kept the expectation at about 70% or above for the whole game.

Top 3 Plays:

Play #45, +12%, Robinson to Roundtree for 49 yards on 3rd and 20.

Play #73, +11%, Robinson to Gallon for 42 yards and 1st and Goal.

Play #67, +10%, Avery picks off the Marve deflection

Bottom 3 Plays:

Play #6, –18%, TerBush to Bush for 48 yards a Purdue lead.

Play #36, –9%, Robinson picked on third down.

Play #46, –9% Gardner picked for the first time this year.

Game Recap

The story of Saturday was mostly Fitz Toussaint, and rightfully so. His +7 on the day was the best mark for a Michigan running back on the season. In fact, other than Vincent Smith’s +6 against Eastern Michigan no Michigan back had even crossed +3 on the season.

The defense continues to do enough to allow the offense to take hold of the game. After four B1G games this season the defense has had a best Win Percent Added (WPA) of +6% from Saturday to a worst of –7% against Northwestern. That is a incredibly tight window to operate in and means that defense has essentially held serve in every B1G game this season. The offense is still doing the heavy lifting, but at least the defense isn’t adding to load this season.

Grades

Grades are in PAN (pts/game) and opponent adjusted.

Rush Offense: +3

Fitz: +7

Vincent Smith: +1

Denard: -7

Pass Offense: +5

Denard: +7

Devin: -1

Rush Defense: +2

Pass Defense: +0

Special Teams: +1 (best of the year)

Heisman Tracking

A little frustrated with the coverage on the Heisman this year. Apparently the NFL GM’s are now deciding who the best performer is in college football. This isn’t a knock on Andrew Luck, but just because the NFL says he is a sure thing, doesn’t automatically mean he is going to have the most deserving year. He has piled up good stats against bad teams so far and the conversation could still change.

Here are my ratings of the top contenders looking at both PAN and WPA.

Player, School: PAN (Rank), WPA (Rank)

Andrew Luck, Stanford: +6 (25th), +1.7 (8th)

Trent Richardson, Alabama:  +4 (2nd RB), +.4 (11th)

Kellen Moore, Boise St: +11 (4th), +2.1 (4th)

Russell Wilson, Wisconsin: +13 (1st), +2.4 (1st)

Case Keenum , Houston: +13 (2nd), +2.2 (3rd)

Denard Robinson, Michigan: +6 (22nd), +2.2 (2nd)

Ron Zook Dumb Punt of the Week

Pickings were a little slimmer this week but this week’s award goes to the Will Muschamp and the Florida Gators. Trailing by 4 in the World’s Largest Non-Alcoholic but Actually a Total Drunkfest Party with a little over 8 minutes to go, the Gators faced 4th and 2 at the Georgia 37. This one works out for the Gators, even though they go on to lose, anyway. After taking a Delay of Game to give the punter more room (the first sign of a dumb punt), Florida manages to down the ball at the 4 and get a three and out. Florida gets the ball back at the 36, trading 2+ minutes on the clock to get a yard and a fresh set of downs, the Gators throw three straight incompletions and then go for the 4th and 10 but fail, never getting the ball back.

Projections and Ranking

If you missed it Monday I posted detailed odds for the B1G championship game. Michigan stands at 9.5% overall. Going 4-0 down the stretch bumps it up to nearly 40%. A loss to division foes Iowa or Nebraska effectively kills the chances where going 3-1 with a loss to either Illinois or Ohio still leaves the odds around 20%.

After an expected win last week against Purdue, the overall win projection for Michigan is relatively unchanged in between 9 and 10 wins.

Game Odds

Opp (Change vs last post)

@Iowa: 67% (-1%)

@Illinois: 55% (+6%)

Nebraska: 56% (-8%)

Ohio: 70% (-7%)

My Top 5

1. Oklahoma St

2. Boise St

3. LSU

4. Alabama

5. Stanford

B1G Ten

9. Nebraska

12. Michigan

13. Wisconsin

15. Michigan St

19. Penn St

38. Purdue

42. Ohio

47. Illinois

73. Northwestern

88. Iowa

104. Minnesota

113. Indiana

Iowa Preview

PAN, National Rank (leader), B1G Rank (leader)

Rush Offense

Michigan: +5, 3rd (Georgia Tech), 1st

Iowa: +1, 53rd, 7th

Pass Offense

Michigan: +2, 32nd (Boise), 4th (Wisconsin)

Iowa: –6, 118th, 11th

Rush Defense

Michigan: +2, 25th (LSU), 5th (Michigan St)

Iowa: +3, 18th, 3rd

Pass Defense

Michigan: +1, 43rd (Oklahoma St), 7th (Michigan St)

Iowa: +3, 23rd, 2nd

Special Teams

Michigan: 0, 88th (Florida St), 10th (Purdue)

Iowa: +1, 49th, 7th

The next three games are all slight Michigan favors before matching up with an improving Ohio team. A home game versus Iowa would make me more comfortable but I still think it goes our way, 37-30 Michigan.

One final note is that based on a little twitter prompting from @cdbarker I have begun work on a game-theory manifesto and it's going to be long, probably to be posted in December. Planned topics include: how to use timeouts, suprise on-side kicks, a better 2-point conversion chart and possibly a revisit of 4th down stategy. Hit me in the comments or @The_Mathlete with other things you would like to see.