Latest B10 Power Rankings from ESPN - M #3

Submitted by Moleskyn on

Ritttenberg (apparently he's spelling it with 3 t's these days) and Bennett posted their latest Big Ten power rankings, and we showed up at #3(!), behind Wiscy and Nebraska. Some little nuggets of goodness:

3. Michigan (4-0): The Wolverines are 4-0 for the third consecutive year, and there are reasons to believe this season will be different than the previous two. There are also reasons to remain concerned. Michigan beat San Diego State primarily because of its defense, which is a very encouraging sign. Craig Roh led the Wolverines' best defensive effort of the season. Denard Robinson did his thing with 200 rush yards and three touchdowns, although his mistakes in the passing game could come back to haunt UM.

I'm kind of surprised to see us ranked so high (and Indiana is worse than Minny??), but hey, I'll take it. The full rankings:

  1. Wisconsin
  2. Nebraska
  3. Michigan
  4. Illinois
  5. Sparty
  6. Ohio Polytechnic Institute
  7. Penn State
  8. Iowa
  9. Northwestern
  10. Purdue
  11. Minnesota
  12. Indiana

burtcomma

September 26th, 2011 at 4:05 PM ^

"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."

―Yoda to Luke

 

 

Powerful you have become, the dark side I sense in you.

-- Yoda

 

Grave danger you are in. Impatient you are.

-- Yoda

 

Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.

-- Yoda

 

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

-- Yoda

 

Always in motion is the future.

-- Yoda

 

Around the survivors a perimeter create.

-- Yoda

 

Size matters not.

-- Yoda

 

May the force be with you.

-- Yoda

 

Blind we are, if creation of this clone army we could not see.

-- Yoda

 

A Jedi's strength flows from the Force.

-- Yoda

 

Help you I can, yes.

-- Yoda

 

Strong am I with the force.

-- Yoda

 

Agree with you the council does. Your apprentice Skywalker will be.

-- Yoda

 

Always two there are, no more, no less: a master and an apprentice.

-- Yoda

 

Lost a planet Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing.

-- Yoda

 

When 900 years you reach, look as good, you will not.

-- Yoda

 

There... is... another... Sky... walker

-- Yoda

74polSKA

September 26th, 2011 at 1:56 PM ^

Maybe he felt bad putting Minnesota last because of their coaching situation.  I hope his doctors get things figured out.  There are more important things than football, especially Golden Gopher football!

ijohnb

September 26th, 2011 at 1:45 PM ^

the Fuckeyes are underrated there.  At 6, behind Illinois? 

My take: 3. Ohio, 4. Sparty, 5.UM , 6. PSU 7. Illinois

We simply have to beat State before we can jump them.

Moleskyn

September 26th, 2011 at 2:09 PM ^

So remember that thread earlier today where people were complaining about the declining quality of the board lately? One thing that should not be tolerated is immature and childish references to other schools. If we really want to clean up the quality of the board, then we should either encourage the mods to hit people like this with negative points or petition Brian to reinstitute negs.

ijohnb

September 26th, 2011 at 2:57 PM ^

scUM is used with regularity everywhere, referring OSU as Ohio is an indignity in its own right, and if you ask half the people on this Blog Ohio State is some community college where all players sell championship rings, can't spell a word, and cheat all the time.  With all the garbage (a good deal of it being fiction) about OSU on this blog and I am getting blasted for use of the "f-word."  In a post where I said they were underrated?

Get over it.

Moleskyn

September 26th, 2011 at 3:08 PM ^

scUM is used with regularity everywhere

Doesn't that prove my point? If our rivals are stooping low and using childish, classless references to our team, does that mean we should react in the same vein? Not at all. We make them look dumb by rising above it.

And you're right about some posters around here who spew out garbage about tSIO and Sparty. You can search through all my posts if you want, but you will never find me condoning that kind of talk. I think it's classless and stupid and I've called out others on it before (you're not the first). I just think, as a fanbase, we should be better than that.

The whole meme with referring to tSIO with out actually calling them Ohio State was started by Hoke and the team and is funny. Sure, it pokes fun at them, but it's hardly over the top and is not classless at all.

SanFrancisco_W…

September 26th, 2011 at 3:11 PM ^

The problem here is that there is precident for not using these stupid sayings.  Let Ohio fans use scUM all they want, it shows their juvenile level of intelligence and creativity.

 

But do what you want, I mean this isn't Brian's blog or anything...Read Here for further things you may not want to do.  Or if you don't want to go click the link, I'll even add it here for you:

 

"How can I avoid downvotes?

Don't be redundant. Don't use stupid nicknames like O$U. Spell things correctly. Don't post useless replies like "I agree" and whatnot."

skitchbeatz

September 26th, 2011 at 1:44 PM ^

Had SDSU's QB been a bit more accurate they would have moved the ball some. I would expect future opponents to be more accurate. There were so many times I let out a sigh of relief because of dropped balls or inacccurate throws. Our guys were often out of position in the secondary.

Blue in Yarmouth

September 26th, 2011 at 1:56 PM ^

Not saying there weren't dropped balls or inaccurate throws, but I didn't see a whole lot of plays where our defenders weren't right there for a tackle even if the ball was on target. I didn't see many plays where they were out of position at all and I think a lot of their inability to get things going was more about the way our line was getting pressure on the QB than the QB simply being inaccurate. 

I actually thought the defense played pretty damn good for the first time in years. I am hoping their offense really is as good as advertised and we just played a hell of a game rather than the altenative.

andrewG

September 26th, 2011 at 2:19 PM ^

there were a lot of first downs they could have made with a decently thrown ball or a receiver not dropping a perfectly thrown ball. sure, tacklers were in the area, but it's moving the chains instead of stalling drives.

not to take away from the D though, because they did play great, but sdsu also missed a lot of opportunities on their own.

CRex

September 26th, 2011 at 1:46 PM ^

Yup tOSU is underrated.  They got punked by the Miami offense, but I think their defense does well in conference play.

At this point Nebraska and Wisconsin are the true elite.  Then there are a bunch of mid level teams and some utter crap at the bottom.  

FreddieMercuryHayes

September 26th, 2011 at 1:47 PM ^

Honestly, I don't think we're that high. Too inconsistent on both sides of the ball. We've shown flashes, but until we can have a complete game, I remain worried this just the last two years. Again, I think the crux is the MSU game.

Needs

September 26th, 2011 at 2:03 PM ^

There are just major doubts about every team between 3 and 10 on that list. Nebraska even has some, even if they seem less pressing.

We can't pass and memories of GERG have everyone nervous.

Illinois was neck and neck with WMU

MSU doesn't have an o-line

OSU is starting a true freshman qb.

PSU can decide what they're doing on offense and just lost their best defensive player.

Iowa lost to ISU

Northwestern doesn't know if Persa will be able to play and lost to Army.

You can likely reorder all of those teams depending on what happens any given Saturday. To this point, though, we've done the most to answer questions out of those teams, but the Big 10's just not very good this year.

Moleskyn

September 26th, 2011 at 2:34 PM ^

Also, Iowa nearly lost to Pitt, and Ferentz-ball.

And it looks like Persa might be back this weekend. I think it's safe to say that NW is a much better team with Persa at QB (assuming he's able to come back and play to the same level as last year).

But I would agree with your general assessment of the conference. Wisconsin definitely seems like the most complete team, but other than that, every other team has some looming question mark.

Looking at our schedule, we've got a legitimate shot of being 9-0 heading into our final 3 games. Obviously, @NW, MSU, and Iowa will be the tough games, but they certainly seem more winnable now than they did at the beginning of the year.

SEAL Fan

September 26th, 2011 at 1:48 PM ^

I don't see how we can be ranked #3 in the B1G when we're 110th in the country for passing offense.  At least it's encouraging to see that we're allowing 11 fewer points per game than we were at this time last year.  

Tha Stunna

September 26th, 2011 at 3:20 PM ^

Who do you think should be ranked over us, given the results this year?  Only OSU and MSU looked better (arguably) going into the year, along with maybe Penn State, and they all have pretty nasty losses.  Iowa doesn't look better than us, and Northwestern is still a big question mark.

74polSKA

September 26th, 2011 at 2:33 PM ^

it should be THE Ohio STATE Polytechnic Institute.  The Ohio Polytechnic Institute would just be Ohio, which is where I went to school, which gets confusing sometimes when I see posts about "Ohio" on this site.  Every now and then I find myself thinking "when did Michigan put the Bobcats on the schedule?".

74polSKA

September 26th, 2011 at 2:53 PM ^

It's definitely part of the joke and I get it and it's really funny.  I was at Ohio U - or Ohio without the THE - when they were fighting with THE Ohio State University over the right to use the name Ohio on their uniforms or the ability to trademark their uniform designs or something like that.  I'm pretty sure they started emphasizing THE after that lawsuit as kind of an "up yours" to OU.  I may just be taking it that way though.  If MSU is Michigan's little bro, then OU is Tosu's red-headed stepchild.

umichfutball

September 26th, 2011 at 1:53 PM ^

after the last few years, I have learned to temper me excitement a bit and to take everything with a grain of salt.  My excitement level will change when we get into the real B10 competition, barring no setbacks this weekend

biakabutuka ex…

September 26th, 2011 at 1:55 PM ^

Hoke is just a damn lucky guy. It appears that each team in the Big Ten is one level worse than they were last year with the exceptions of Wisconsin and maybe Illinois and Nebraska  (and the latter are at best as good as last year). I can't ever remember the entire conference regressing across the board like this.

Right now, it doesn't look like Michigan even needs to be better to be #3 or #4, they just have to keep up with last year's team. And in fact that's probably where they are, with the offense going a step backward (for now) and the defense a step forward (for now).

dahblue

September 26th, 2011 at 2:04 PM ^

Yeah, the offense (best in the nation in red zone %) has taken a step back.  We're #33 in total offense.  That's terrible.  Further, the scoring defense has gone from "do they have 120 teams in DI?" to #13.  That's not luck.  That's a vastly improved defense which is carrying along an offense that would be churning even more yards/points but for excessive interceptions.

If we were to "just keep up" with last year's team, our defense would be the worst in the nation and we'd have lost to SDSU, Western and ND.

dahblue

September 26th, 2011 at 3:18 PM ^

I don't consider #33 to be a step back in offense (especially when our TO ratio is better, our red zone % is better and our injured QB stats are better).  I'd much rather have an offense that rolls up less yards but scores in the red zone.  That said, I'm not happy with the offense.  I think it's still far too Denard-centric and we haven't shown an ability to pass the ball (short or long) without covering eyes and hoping it isn't picked off.

Some B1G teams have regressed, but Nebraska is a positive addition, Wisc is better, MSU is as good as they'll ever get (although they're still overrated), Illinois is better.  Ohio has indeed regressed (which happens when 5 stars are suspended).  PSU - not so good.  On the whole, I think the conference is about the same as it was last year.

dahblue

September 26th, 2011 at 3:48 PM ^

I think you might be right about TO margin (having much to do with the game which shall not be counted), but hard to beat 100% RZ.  I also think we played a much tougher OOC than last year.  Maybe I just can't get over how fucking bad our defense was.