MartintheMopMan

Both teams playing to lose at the end.

It's a nail biter. 90-52 Purdue. 3 minutes left.

Yogi is crazy clutch. I think the "elaborate" really meant "when specifically?"

It would be the greatest atmosphere in sports.   Maybe after a couple years of sustained success and some active volunteers.

I would love if we did more stuff like this. I know they try some things, but I think it's crazy for a program so steeped in tradition, we lack bunches of classic chants or well-coordinated fan moves or anything like that. Not enough songs either. The only way to improve Assembly Hall's crowd is better coordination.   Up here we have an MLS team with complicated and intense fan chants and activities. Like a freakin' Rocky Horror Picture show showing. They manage to make a relatively small crowd seem huge with it and the fans know they're expected to participate and are too prideful not to learn their roles.   That would be huge in Assembly Hall. We could make those walls seem like they're tumbling in.   Here's one of the Timbers chants. Wicked old video though, they're actually more intense now. It just came up first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7mo3_I9ltY

Maryland is the luckiest team in the country.   Again.

That might have done it. (That was the 3)   Oh yeah, I would never pit them against the Hall. Just curious about their new(ish) digs. About the same capacity as us, interesting shape, good sight lines. It looks well designed. I wonder how the sound is at reaching the floor.

Clutch.

Dakich is such a douche.   I've never been in the Xfinity center though, anyone know how it is? I loved Cole Field House. I watched the 2002 Championship game in there.

I'm watching.   Gtown is slaughtering them on D. They're playing very physically and Maryland is not getting good looks. They're also sending MD to the line constantly. That is the only reason MD is in this game at all.    Maryland's D is ok, but not compared to their talent level.  It's keeping Gtown under control but just not controlled enough. Just nothing is falling MD's way. 

That's right! Let's take it to College Park and show them why the Metro is an overrated system of transportation! And those kids in West Lafayette already know it smells, but let's remind then the Bucket belongs to us!   And boy-oh-boy, let's be sure to at least do one of those two, since otherwise even this 5-7 conversation will be a little embarrassing.

It's only allowed when there aren't enough 6 win teams since the alternative is cancelling bowls and they'd never do that.   I agree that we haven't shown we deserve to go bowling. Though, I can't say I wouldn't watch.   Hey wait, why is this a new topic? It should be merged with the pre-bye week bowl projection thread. Jeez 41. Disappear for awhile and suddenly you're crowding the boards.   This article was much more interesting than the last two I read though. I didn't know the NCAA was resistant to picking 5-7 teams outside of the top 5 in APR and hadn't given much thought to how the bowls themselves would decide.   What a crazy situation.

Interesting stuff, thanks.   It's weird, the more I learn about Lagow the less I seem to know. His story is the definition of a bummer though. Committed to UConn, had some second thoughts, decided to go anyway, had the UConn coaching staff absolutely dismantled. Ended up without his recruiting coaches facing a massive QB controversy. Ends up leaving to take a walk-on spot at Oklahoma State. Learns a new style of offense and gets huge during his sit-out year, but OK State is just too deep at QB to move up the depth chart. When it's clear he won't be playing there, he went down to Cisco to be a JUCO transfer this year.   Kid sounds like he would fit in very well here and has a lot of physical gifts. I cannot figure out how much eligibility he has left, but I think it's two years.   If he's smart, he's waiting until the December period to make any decisions (and if we aren't sticking with Wilson hopefully we'll decide fast). I would really hate for him to come here and watch his coaching staff be dismantled again. Better for him to end up at UNLV in that case. But, he could do good things and make next year hurt a little less if Wilson is sticking around.

And I would never argue with that.   A single recruiting class is still not predictive. Sustained recruiting success? Well, yeah, duh. 

Just to poke the bear, since I have no idea how this conversation went after my original posts...   When I made the original argument back on page 1, that I don't think class rank is predictive of a season alone. You can take the 247 recruiting class rankings for 2015 and look at the 25 teams who had better classes than us and see they are not currently doing better than we are.   That was literally all I was saying. Just because Miss State had a 20th ranked class and we had a 26th, doesn't mean they can beat Southern and we can't.

I guess it's a question of what we're calling good right?   I think they'll be better than they are, probably around Creighton this year. Ranked in the mid-70s on KenPom. Bubble tourney team. Relatively predictable after the first few games. High-floor moderately low-ceiling.    Totally depends on Newman leaving though. Weatherspoon and Holman are a decent base, they have some success with their unranked players, but I don't think it will be enough to pull them up to being as good as like NC State this year. Maybe I'm wrong, all depends on how the rest of their class shakes out and how much they improve as seniors.

Loaded enough to beat Southern, but it does show exactly what I was talking about in another thread. The pieces already in place at Miss State aren't very good. They'll have this dominant class of like 6 freshman joining a weak team of upperclassman. While his class is awesome, they'll still just be freshman and it will take a couple more great classes to make a good team.

5'10? Guess he won't win a lot of battles for those high passes. Love the early commit though.

I know a few people who grew up in the Philippines. Luxury living if you have a moderate income. No carpets. But otherwise a really great place to grow up and live.

  Do you have any examples of total offensive failure using our starters? Or just OSU and PSU? I mean, no one is ever going to argue Zander Diamont or Kirk Cameron properly fits the offensive scheme. Did our defense put us in the position to win but we lost because of the offense against Rutgers? Michigan? MSU? Iowa? Did our defense actually put us in a position to win against OSU and PSU or are those just two games where they played better than the offense? Our offense can't be constant and consistent without Sudfeld and Howard and I don't think anyone believes they're supposed to be. We aren't designed deep.   People blame the defense because through every single game they've been bad. They've been bad in the same ways over and over. Teams score at will against us, especially during the end of the game. It's nice that during four games we had an offense high-powered enough to cover up the defensive failings, but that does not mean the defense is not failing. A team that has a defense so bad they need to score 3 points per possession or the offense is letting the defense down has a bad defense.   Even when playing with a lead, the defense cannot do the basic tasks asked of them. And that you're celebrating games where the defense put us in such a great position because all the offense had to do was make an 80-yard drive just shows how truly awful they are. 

The blitz is one of the biggest (or at least most visible) issues with the defense.   It seems when it is working well (and it has worked very well), Knorr backs off of it or doesn't keep it fresh enough to stop it from being picked up every time. It was great during MSU, in some parts of Iowa it was helping, PSU it was a huge factor, but eventually the play-calling stops matching their O-line and we're either committing to the blitz but being picked up and leaving guys open behind or not committing and giving the QB unlimited time for WRs to break coverage, which will inevitably happen no matter how good the secondary is. Knorr just seems to have trouble finding that sweet spot where he gets pressure but doesn't sacrifice the rest of the defense for it.   How many of the plays that saved Michigan Saturday night came during big blitzes that were immediately picked up?

If our D is so good, why are they ranked 104th in the country (and were 110th until yesterday's game)?   Yes, we run a hurry up offense designed to score quickly and frequently. I don't understand why you believe that means the defense should be praised for giving up "only" 29 points or "only" 10 points in a half? Are you saying because our offense is designed to score quickly our defense is designed to let them score? Or what? Our offense's ability to score and the defense's ability to stop a score are not connected like that.    I mean, I don't even know what to say. If you believe that allowing a team to score 34 or 29 points is a defensive wall, then I can't imagine what they would have to do for you to believe they didn't play well. I guess your argument is, our defense doesn't have to be "good" because our offense is supposed to score well enough to make up for it? Because we run a fast-paced offense we should praise the defense for "only" giving up 34 points? That's not really an argument for the defense. Maybe if we had a defense who could occasionally hold a team to under 3 touchdowns in a game or get off the field on 3rd down then our offense wouldn't have to score at least 35 points a game to ever have a shot at winning.   How many successful teams can you point to who have to score at least 3 touchdowns + a field goal to win a single game? Even Baylor has held teams to 7. What team do you think should be our model so we can consistently win while our defense gives up 34 points?     And it's bad defensive play to let the other teams star RB get 200 yards on 3 carries. 

Against Penn State the D had some bad penalties and then they completely failed to get pressure on a 5-man rush the whole second half which left our secondary open to be gashed while Hacks had all the time in the world to find his receivers.   Against OSU, Urban made adjustments at the half and we didn't. We held them to fewer than 20 running yards the first half, then they came out in a different formation and Elliot destroyed us with it twice. OSU also had tons of dumb penalties making the defense look better. Ultimately though, they were 18 of 27 in the pass and Elliot averaged 11.9 yards-per-carry.   And more importantly, they both cut us up in the same way everyone does. With throws between the deep and the under. Those high 20 to low 30 yard passes get us every single time.    It's fair to say the whole team failed against both teams. But, since the offense was missing key players and have shown us repeatedly they can get things done, it seems like it makes a lot more sense to point out the defensive failings.   And no offense should be expected to deal with a defense whose defensive effort gets praise for only giving up 29 points. That's terrible.

Kid is great.   99.3% completion rate and 165.6% completion rate at home? Sign me up.   Plus, they already named an elementary school after him: http://www.dallasisd.org/domain/541

The only defense we've had ranked above 84th since 2005 is 57th in 2007.   Bottom quarter for 9/10 years.