Michigan Draws South Carolina In Outback Bowl Comment Count

Brian

you can touch a ray if you go to Tampa. woo.

Michigan returns to Tampa for a rematch against South Carolina, as predicted weeks ago by Brett McMurphy. As far as bowl matchups against SEC teams with the same record as you go, South Carolina is an ideal matchup if your preference is to get any sort of win and get to the next season—and this is my preference.

The Gamecocks rank 67th in S&P+ because that ranking system thinks they're a 6-6 team that's been fortunate. Tale of the tape:

MICHIGAN thing SOCAR
OFFENSE
31st SD RUN RATE 94th
8th RUSH O 67th
10th LINE YARDS 54th
76th PASS O 48th
118th SACKS ALLOWED 71st
24th PASSING DOWNS 102nd
72nd OVERALL 88th
DEFENSE
43rd SD RUN RATE 105th
8th RUSH D 25th
2nd LINE YARDS 41st
2nd PASS D 56th
2nd SACKS 72nd
3rd PASSING DOWNS 31st
10th OVERALL 46th

The Gamecocks' offense is a passing-oriented dunk and dunk outfit; their defense is okay but only that. They've played two games against defenses in Michigan's vicinity; they scored ten points against both Georgia and Clemson, failing to crack 300 yards in either game.

S&P+ favors Michigan by about nine. So naturally Vegas favors a team that lost to Kentucky by ten? By more than a touchdown?

That might be a data entry error. It is exceptionally rare for systems like S&P+ to differ by that much from the Vegas line. It's either that or Vegas pricing in O'Korn, but if Brandon Peters's health is that much of a swing and unknown why would they even have it on the board? I don't know. A dollar says typo.

Anyway. Good matchup Michigan should win.

UPDATE: score one for typo.

Comments

Big Boutros

December 3rd, 2017 at 4:48 PM ^

South Carolina is the fifth-worst bowl eligible P5 team to S&P+, ahead of only UCLA, Arizona State, Duke, and Kentucky. If we are healthy, we should demolish them.

reshp1

December 3rd, 2017 at 10:30 PM ^

I feel like Michigan's offense never got their feet under them this whole season. Every time they seemed to put it together another costly injury or QB change would set them back. Given a month to heal up and drill some the deficencies (i.e. pass pro), I think we're going to be a pretty tough team to beat.

jmblue

December 3rd, 2017 at 4:51 PM ^

It's astonishing that we could have that huge of a disparity between our rush offense and sacks-allowed rate.  You'd think that being really good in one of the two would make you at least passable in the other, just from defenses being forced to overplay it.  Hopefully we never see that again.

bronxblue

December 3rd, 2017 at 4:59 PM ^

Yeah, that line has to be a typo. Unless Vegas suddenly got into the business of giving money away for no good reason.

This should be a comfortable win. I assume not unlike Purdue, but with less offensive creativity and, I hope, better medical facilities.

Pierre Despereaux

December 3rd, 2017 at 5:16 PM ^

Did not realize we were that bad at giving up sacks. Better tighten that up for next year a whole lot if we expect to go far. Don't care who your QB is, if he has no time he's not going to do much.

That said, SoCar should be a good win to get 2018 off on the right foot.