What Saith The Geek?

It's good to be The Geek

Guess who's back, Pumpkin-tits.... The Geek from thegeeksheetsports.com is back to lay some straight college football knowledge on yo ass. If you're a betting man, and/or a degenerate gambler, you'd be wise to listen to the man. Unless you're above 80% on the season...then you need to start your own gosh damn service, asshole.

We had an incredible week last week, going 7-0 on our recommended plays, including a couple of the B12 contests. We actually have two of the bigger SEC games this week that were close to being recommended plays, but that we passed on. Below is the analysis of those games, as well as one play that we are working on right now which will be a recommended play. We are now 27-9 this season on our recommended plays, so for more information about this week’s plays be sure to click here.

	337	Vanderbilt Commodores
Saturday 10/18/2008	338	Georgia Bulldogs	15

We still aren’t done with this play and will be spending the rest of the night doing our final analysis on this and about 15 other plays, but based on our work earlier this week I don’t think there will be enough line value to warrant a play. Vandy has been living on borrowed time this season going 5-0 (until last week) despite averaging 250 ypg offenses (even more amazing is that they are averaging 25 ppg at 250 ypg). They’ve only really faced 2 good defenses this year, and that is Auburn and Miss St, and in those last 2 games have only averaged 14 ppg. Fortunately for them those two defenses also happen to be on the teams with the 2 worst offenses in the league. They won’t be so lucky this week as they get a top caliber defense (on par with MSU and AU) which will hold Vandy to 250 & 14 again. UGA’s offense has kind of sputtered around this year, but is still putting up very solid numbers (430 ypg & 33 ppg) to pretty good defenses (that are otherwise allowing only 340 ypg and 23 ppg).

Our projections call for a projected 410 yards for UGA compared to 190 for Vandy. My projections and our other models we uses all have pretty much the same thing with 11-16 pts for Vandy (which at 190 yards if they don’t continue to be the beneficiary of the TO battle and near perfect red zone and special teams play could easily be 0) and 27-37 for UGA. This is definitely a UGA or no bet scenario, and really the only thing keeping me off this is a worse case indicator we run that projects a 25-16 UGA victory. Given Vandy’s track record this year and UGAs shaky performance thus far, that is probably a lot more likely than a 41 – 7 UGA victory. My guess is the magic starts to run out on VAndy, UGA starts to resemble the team we though they’d be this year and UGA pulls way late. UGA 36 Vandy 14.

08:00PM	381	LSU Fighting Tigers	3.5
Saturday 10/18/2008	382	South Carolina Gamecocks

This is a pretty interesting match up as I am still not really sure what to expect from LSU, particularly after that drubbing last week, and USC has had me mystified all year. Not surprisingly our models are all over the place, with half of them having USC winning out right and half having LSU winning by double digits. Mathematically, LSU is the superior team with better offense (+0.7 yppl to -0.2 yppl) and the team with the better match ups. USC does have a very good defense, but my guess here is that USCs propensity to turn the ball over (they have 20 offensive TOs this season thru only 7 games), and LSUs very good offense (even last week vs UF they managed 21 pts dispite 320 yards and 3 TOs will be more than USCs defense can overcome.

We make it a habit to not go against our models, which will cause us to scratch this game, but I really believe LSU get’s it done here, and probably pretty big. Our models call for a 24-22 LSU victory (which could easily be flipped). However, if you remove UFs performance last week vs LSUs defense and use the balance of the defensive numbers for LSU compared to USCs offense, USC doesn’t get to 300 yards, even with the UF performance last week USC still only gets 340 yards, and with a projected TO margin of 3-1 (USC – LSU), I don’t see much probability USC gets to 20. LSU 27 USC 17.

We don’t really have a good beat on any of the other games, but thought we’d include a snip-it of one our recommended plays this week. For more on this game and the other recommended plays for this week, click here, it’s only $40 bucks, and at 27-9 thus far you would have paid for it about 40 times over thus far this season.

12:30PM	331	Nebraska Cornhuskers	6.5
Saturday 10/18/2008	332	Iowa State Cyclones

ISU has had a rough go of it of late, and unfortunately for them they haven’t even hit the meat of the high flying B12 offenses. ISU has given up 36.5 ppg & 442 ypg the last 3 weeks to some ok but relatively speaking average offensive units in UNLV, Kansas, and Baylor. The 1^st 2 of those 3 games they were the beneficiary of a +3 TO margin which is the only reason those games were close as they averaged only 332 ypg in those games. Last week v. Baylor, Iowa State performed closer to reality scoring only 10 points on 257 yards offense.

Nebraska’s offense is averaging 421 ypg (6.4 yppl) which is +1.3 yppl as they’ve faced good defenses that otherwise allow only 5.1 yppl and 346 ypg. Neb has been particularly good in the air averaging 8.6 ypa (which is +2.1 ypa). They get an ISU defense getting torched this year by competition far worse than Neb. ISU is allowing 8.4 ypa to bad passing teams that otherwise would only average 6.9 ypa. This creates a +3.5 ypa advantage for Neb, and my projections call for 10.3 ypa. That is a 1^st down for every pass attempt (not completion but attempt). Total projections are for 486 yards offense (338 in the air) at 7.0 yppl.

Nebraska’s defense, despite allowing 380 ypg and 28 ppg (5.9 yppl) is actually better than average as they’ve faced a collective slate of very good offenses that average 432 ypg and 34 ppg (6.3 yppl), so Neb is actually +0.4 yppl better than average. That should be plenty good enough to keep an anemic ISU offense in check that is only averaging 336 ypg (5.1 yppl) despite playing some mediocre defenses that are allowing 360 ypg and 5.4 yppl. ISU is at a statistical disadvantage in every offensive category, and not a small one (they are -0.6 in ypr, ypa, and yppl). Our projections call for only 342 yards offense (5.4 yppl). I’ll lay 7 on the road getting the team that looks to average more yppl than the home team does ypa, and has the statistical advantage in every match up category in this game.

All our models are pretty consistent with 34-40 points for Nebraska, and a high indicator of 53 points (which given my projection of near 500 yards offense is actually quite likely). Because of the offenses Nebraska’s defense has faced this year, ISU’s offensive projections get skewed a little to the high side, despite Nebraska’s defense being decidedly better than ISUs offense (basically because Nebraska’s defense starts from a higher absolute base due to the offenses they faced and their scoring / yardage averages), which causes a model and math projection of 21-25 points for ISU. We’ll stick with that, but given the match up indicators, my guess is a performance closer to what ISU did last week to Baylor. Nebraska 37 Iowa State 23.

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