Armadillo: Saturday's six-pack
College football trends for Saturday's action
-- Underdogs covered eight of last ten North Carolina-Miami games.
-- Kansas State covered eight of last ten as a Big X home favorite.
-- Purdue covered seven of last ten as a road underdog.
-- Air Force covered 13 of last 17 games with Army, but is 0-5 in its last five games as a road favorite.
-- Baylor covered 19 of its last 22 home games.
-- Northwestern covered 14 of its last 21 games as a road underdog.
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Armadillo: Saturday's List of 13: Random stuff with weekend here.....
13) Kevin Durant has a walking boot on his injured foot, Russell Westbrook broke his right hand Thursday night and the Oklahoma City Thunder are 0-2, with not much relief in sight before Thanksgiving. Like we said, its going to take 50 wins to make the playoffs in the west; Thunder aren’t putting a 50-win team on the floor anytime soon.
12) In 2008, NFL teams averaged 211.3 passing yards per game; so far this year, 241.7. That’s a 14.4% increase in six years.
11) ESPN the Magazine had some interesting stuff this month; from 2001-03, NFL tight ends were responsible for 15.8% of a team’s passing yardage. From 2012-now, that number has risen to 22.6%. Spread offenses are said to the reason why.
10) CBS is remaking the Odd Couple again next TV season, with Matthew Perry as Oscar Madison. This will make me sound old(er) but no one could top Jack Klugman as Oscar.
The next few notes are related to college basketball and again, they come from my reading of this week’s ESPN the Magazine…….
9) ESPN’s Jay Bilas says if Kentucky divided its team into two 6-man units, both units would be ranked in the top 25, that show much talent they have. Calipari’s team actually has too much talent; no way he can keep all those guys happy.
8) Wisconsin returns 82% of its minutes from last year; their defense slipped last year, curious to see if what is basically the same team will play better defense this season.
7) Duke’s 2-point FG% defense was 49.1% LY, which ranked 13th……in the 14-team ACC. Freshman C Jahlil Okafor is supposed to be really good, so we’ll see if Duke is better defensively this year.
6) Villanova was 8-1 LY in games decided by 5 or less points, or in OT; the other seven #1/#2 seeds in NCAA’s were a combined 43-22 (66.2%) in close games like those, which infers Villanova may have had luck on its side LY. Wildcats have a veteran team, should win Big East this year.
5) Gonzaga has a freshman named Domantas Sabonis, whose dad Arvydas was the best basketball very few people saw play, at least until he tore his Achilles tendon. The elder Sabonis played for Portland late in his career, after the injury, but was in Russia at the peak of his career, before the Internet. His son is supposed to be very good and should help the Zags win the WCC again.
4) VCU was a bully team in the A-14 last year; they forced turnovers on 23.6% of possessions, rebounded 35.5% of their missed shots, so they were just a lot more athletic than most opponents. But if you didn’t turn the ball over forced them to set up in the half court, they made only 44.6% of their 2-point shots, 9th in a 14-team league. If you held your own on the boards, then they struggled to score.
3) SMU made 37.9% of its 3-pointers last year, which is very good, but they ranked 339th out of 351 D-I teams when it came to %age of shots that were 3’s.
Larry Brown is old-fashioned and doesn’t like the trey, despite playing/coaching in the ABA. We’ll see if Coach Brown, a media darling for sure, gets his team in the NCAAs after they were a disappointment in missing it LY.
2) Syracuse scored 63 or less points in 11 of its last 13 games LY and lost 59% of its minutes played from LY. Boeheim always has players, but his players this year are very young and could struggle some in an improved ACC. Don’t forget, Louisville is in the ACC now.
1) Say what you want about Jameis Winston, but he is 21-0 as a starting QB in college and he’s stared down a few double digit deficits.
His career going forward is going to be fascinating to study, as he heads to the fishbowl that is playing QB in the NFL.
