Goin' to the Poin! 2012 Poinsettia Bowl Thread

[Indy Coug]

The first two week in August are beautiful.

Damn. I went the 2nd week of July. Just missed it.

[pelagius]

I would submit if you used a model that placed significantly more weight on recent results, BYU should be a neutral underdog to Fresno.

Well .... maybe. It depends on the model and how you weight I am sure. It doesn't look like it is true for a "pure" MOV model. I did a very stark version of this. I rated Frenso St as two separate teams: (1) Fresno St up to an including the Boise St game and (2) Fresno St post the Boise St game:

NCAA Football: 2012
Computer Rating Model: Margin of Victory (RAW)
Only Division 1A and 1AA games used

Rank  Team                    Rating   W   L
30    Fresno St               79.601   4   3
26    Fresno St2              81.229   5   0

That difference isn't statistically significant (of course and that's a ridiculous hurdle in the context of these models and what I did) abd the magnitude is small. Frenso St, in the last 5 games, didn't play anyone good at all. Nevada and Air Force don't have bad records but they are pretty below average (but not awful) teams.

[The_Douger]

Are you that confident in a win? I give this squad a 50/50 chance against SDSU.

I just don't care. If the coaches are going to make us watch the Riley Nelson show one more time, I don't think we'll win. I felt a lot better 2 years ago when Heaps went out against UTEP and performed well.

It's more exciting for me to play someone we haven't seen a bunch and dominated for thirty years straight, even if it's an overmatched team like UTEP.

Fresno's a better team than SDSU as well. SDSU is only getting invited because they're the home town team.

So, if Riley plays, I don't think we'll win. If we do win, it'll be like last year where he plays crappy and annoys me the whole game, only to pull a win out of his ass.

[The_Douger]

I don't agree for this reason. When we left the MWC, SDSU really dissed us. Was it an assistant AD that told the BIG12 we were a pain in the butt to work with?

San Diego St. fans really dislike us. If we are going to win a meaningless bowl game, I am much happier if I know it puts their fans in pain.

Don't get me wrong, if we win, I'll enjoy rubbing that horrible fanbase's nose in it. It's just not an exciting game to me overall, however.

[pelagius]

I just don't care. If the coaches are going to make us watch the Riley Nelson show one more time, I don't think we'll win. I felt a lot better 2 years ago when Heaps went out against UTEP and performed well.

It's more exciting for me to play someone we haven't seen a bunch and dominated for thirty years straight, even if it's an overmatched team like UTEP.

People can certainly like Heaps performance against UTEP (it was good), and certainly BYU hadn't played UTEP in a while. I may just be about preferences if you were excited by the bowl game and not this one. I got no problem with that.

Still, it is worth remembering that UTEP was a bad team (and it was bad both offensively and defensively), and not bad relative to the cross-section of bowl teams that year. Bad relative to the cross-section of Div 1A and 1AA teams. That team was much closer in quality to Idaho, Hawaii, and NMST this year than it is to San Diego St this year. It was, I think, by most reasonable benchmarks worse than Washington St this year (in terms of ranking in the cross section and that's even if you take out the BYU game result for UTEP).

[Indy Coug]

People can certainly like Heaps performance against UTEP (it was good), and certainly BYU hadn't played UTEP in a while. I may just be about preferences if you were excited by the bowl game and not this one. I got no problem with that.

Still, it is worth remembering that UTEP was a bad team (and it was bad both offensively and defensively), and not bad relative to the cross-section of bowl teams that year. Bad relative to the cross-section of Div 1A and 1AA teams. That team was much closer in quality to Idaho, Hawaii, and NMST this year than it is to San Diego St this year. It was, I think, by most reasonable benchmarks worse than Washington St this year (in terms of ranking in the cross section and that's even if you take out the BYU game result for UTEP).

UTEP was the worst BYU bowl opponent ever, and they were the worst by several orders of magnitude.

[The_Douger]

People can certainly like Heaps performance against UTEP (it was good), and certainly BYU hadn't played UTEP in a while. I may just be about preferences if you were excited by the bowl game and not this one. I got no problem with that.

Still, it is worth remembering that UTEP was a bad team (and it was bad both offensively and defensively), and not bad relative to the cross-section of bowl teams that year. Bad relative to the cross-section of Div 1A and 1AA teams. That team was much closer in quality to Idaho, Hawaii, and NMST this year than it is to San Diego St this year. It was, I think, by most reasonable benchmarks worse than Washington St this year (in terms of ranking in the cross section and that's even if you take out the BYU game result for UTEP).

I'm not arguing UTEP is a better opponent.

It's a bad bowl (that we deserve to be playing in), it's before Christmas, it's a time of year I'd never travel, and it's an opponent we've seen a lot of games with over the years. Seeing Riley Nelson start another game detracts from the experience as well.

I know UTEP was a bad team. It just felt kind of cool to play them again, because I grew up watching us play them. Maybe SDSU will be that way in 15 years, but not right now.

[pelagius]

UTEP was the worst BYU bowl opponent ever, and they were the worst by several orders of magnitude.

Yep, probably around the same quality as Southern Utah this year.

[Hsaru]

UTEP and Tulsa's defensive rankings were almost the exact same. And against Tulsa our QB sucked ass.

[Indy Coug]

UTEP and Tulsa's defensive rankings were almost the exact same. And against Tulsa our QB sucked ass.

The two teams aren't remotely comparable.

Tulsa faced Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Boise State and Houston in 2011. All 4 teams were in the top 8 in total offense that season.

UTEP was ranked 86 spots lower in Sagarin than Tulsa and their SOS was 75 spots lower. Furthermore, UTEP got worse and worse as the season went on.

[pelagius]

UTEP and Tulsa's defensive rankings were almost the exact same. And against Tulsa our QB sucked ass.

Those are raw differences; if you do anything that controls for strength of schedule, than there would be a big difference between Tulsa and that UTEP team (as I see Indy already pointed out). In terms of actually a reasonable benchmarking of the UTEP team with a team that Nelson played: Hawaii (2011) is the closest. Those were very similar defensive teams (once you control for strength of schedule):

     +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
     |    opponent   drank   opp_wins   opp_lo~s   scored     eff   yards   td   inte |
     |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
349. |        UTEP     118          6          7       52   171.7     264    4      1 |
362. |      Hawaii     114          6          7       41   176.7     363    3      0 |
     +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Hsaru]

The two teams aren't remotely comparable.

Tulsa faced Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Boise State and Houston in 2011. All 4 teams were in the top 8 in total offense that season.

UTEP was ranked 86 spots lower in Sagarin than Tulsa and their SOS was 75 spots lower. Furthermore, UTEP got worse and worse as the season went on.

Clearly the "teams" aren't comparable, but Riley gets way too much credit for beating Tulsa and their terrible defense. Only reason Tulsa was decent was because of their good offense which we shut down.
They were the 87th ranked defense in 2011. There is zero excuse for playing terrible against that.

[Donuthole]

Those are raw differences; if you do anything that controls for strength of schedule, then then their would be a big difference between Tulsa and that UTEP team (as I see Indy already pointed out). In terms of actually a reasonable benchmarking of the UTEP team with a team that Nelson played: Hawaii is the closest. Those were very similar defensive teams (once you control for strength of schedule):

     +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
     |    opponent   drank   opp_wins   opp_lo~s   scored     eff   yards   td   inte |
     |--------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
349. |        UTEP     118          6          7       52   171.7     264    4      1 |
362. |      Hawaii     114          6          7       41   176.7     363    3      0 |
     +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Indy Coug]

Clearly the "teams" aren't comparable, but Riley gets way too much credit for beating Tulsa and their terrible defense. Only reason Tulsa was decent was because of their good offense which we shut down.
They were the 87th ranked defense in 2011. There is zero excuse for playing terrible against that.

There are absolutely zero people that cite the Tulsa game as a basis for complimenting Riley. The guy was all over the place and should have been picked 7 times.

But to claim that UTEP and Tulsa's defense were anywhere near the same is pure ignorance on your part.

[pelagius]

Unfair, I fixed it even before the edit things showed an edit. Oops, nevermind ... I didn't fix the than.