utsa – 3 ½ over UTEP – Every year we go to Vegas with the hopes of finding a rubber band game. A rubber band game means you take a wad of hundreds, put a rubber band around it and leave it at the window when you make your bet. You don’t have to count it because you know you’re going to get two of them back in about 3 hours. Rubber band games don’t come easily, and sometimes you have to dig deep to find them. Deep dive we go, looking at two of the worst teams in the country.
The power ratings services are showing both UTSA and UTEP with a similar power rating of 51. I think this calculation is flawed and that UTEP has an inflated rating based on the fact that UTEP won 2 games and UTSA didn’t win any. Let’s look at their schedules and results. UTSA on top, UTEP on the bottom.
Take the 3 games UTSA played against the 3 good teams. They lost by an average of 31 points. They were more than respectable in a 10-point loss, 42-32, at Arizona, and were only down a touchdown to 10-3 Kansas State late in the third quarter before things got away from them. Now take the UTEP scores against the two best teams they played….even though not quite as good as the 3 good teams that UTSA played, they lost by an average of 42 points. This means to me that UTEP’s defense is not as good as UTSA’s defense.
Even more revealing is when you compare how they played against lesser teams….UTSA lost to Colorado State by 2 points but Colorado State has a power rating which is 26 points better than the two crap teams that UTEP beat by an average of only 7 points. It makes sense that if UTSA had played teams such as NM State or Incarnate Word they would won those games, and won them more convincingly than UTEP did.
When UTSA played Colorado State, they ran the ball for 279 yards and put up almost 500 yards of offense. In other words, by hanging with Colorado State, UTSA proved that it could play with a team with a power rating of 64, but UTEP really played down to the level of the teams with power ratings of around 40. UTEP really can’t stop anybody, and had to come from behind in the second half to beat a really bad FCS team - Incarnate Word, which was supposed to be UTEP’s body bag game. UTEP had 32 rushing yards at the half with a 1.8 yard per carry average, finishing with 81 yards and a 2.6 per carry average for the game. UTEP's offense struggled early and a telling sequence was when UTEP's first four drives averaged their own 44 as a starting point, but only managed 3.5 yards per play, and only put up three points after three Incarnate Word turnovers in the first half. UTEP sucks.
Another way to look at it is if you ignore out each team’s best played game, you get:
UTSA performance rating: 48
UTEP performance rating 36
If you ignore each team’s worst played game, you get:
UTSA performance rating: 62
UTEP performance rating: 41
Three of five starters that sat out against Colorado State are expected to return this week for the UTSA. Oh by the way, UTEP’s starting quarterback, best running back and starting safety are out for this game.
This week, UTSA is stepping down in competition while UTEP is stepping up. UTEP is going to feel like running against paper to UTSA compared to Kansas State and Oklahoma State. It seems to me that UTSA is actually about 20 points better than UTEP, but they only have to cover 3. Laying the field goal and looking for the first win of the season for the Roadrunners in the RUBBER BAND GAME for 1000 TOUSAND!!!!
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