Monday, December 5, 2016

Hangover: JMU blasts New Hampshire; Penn State gets Snubbed (but not really); West Virginia MBB tops UVA



Well that's one way to end a playoff wins drought.


JMU 55, New Hampshire 22


So much for Bryan Schor being rusty. Schor admitted to being a little nervous for his return to Bridgeforth Stadium, but clearly his game didn't suffer any sort of dropoff after missing a few weeks. JMU rolled up 50+ points for the fifth time this season; the team accumulated 500+ yards of offense for the ninth time this season. Brandon Ravenel dominated the New Hampshire secondary in a way that ostensibly ended the game by halftime.

Overall, offense and special teams played a game that's pretty hard to criticize. That includes Tyler Gray, who was a perfect 2/2 on field goals and 7/7 on extra points.

And how about the defense? Before New Hampshire's final drive, the Wildcats had 179 yards of total offense. Yeah. 179. Against JMU's defense. These last few games, it really seems like the 4-2-5 defensive scheme has settled in and caused serious issues for opposing offenses. For the first time in quite a few years, it doesn't feel like the Madison defense is less than the sum of its parts.

I don't want to go too far over the top on praise for the defense. The unit played well, but Trevor Knight also played like garbage, and it was very noticeable. Sometimes, New Hampshire's offensive stagnation was directly tied to good coverage or clogging running lanes up front. Just as often, Knight was just missing passes. I'm not telling you that New Hampshire would have won if Knight could have gotten his shit together, but there were numerous passes where Knight just missed his guy, and the coverage/pass rush had very little to do with it.

That probably won't be the case in a Friday night matchup with Sam Houston State.


#FreetheBand


You'd be forgiven if you couldn't tell while watching on TV, but the absolute turning point in the game was when the referees stopped the game to quiet JMU's band. I've never seen a group of fans so personally offended by the whims of a referee. I've also never seen a referee stop play to warn a band, which makes me think UNH coach may have said something about the band before the game.

The MRD's were noticeably more conservative in picking their spots to play throughout the remainder of the game, but the crowd more than picked up the slack. Right after the announcement, in particular, was the loudest I've ever seen the student section. (The student section, by the way, was not a real student section on Saturday -- it had wayyy more alumni packed into it than usual.)



Either way, the message was clear. Don't fuck with the Marching Royal Dukes, zebras. The student section spent many of the remaining TV timeouts chanting "Free the Band." It was the most spirited I've seen the section since it so relentlessly went after Kevin Grayson in the 2009 Richmond game.

Overall, I was really impressed with the crowd members that actually showed up... but 13,000? Come on, JMU. You can do better than that.

Oh, and let's not forget the two 30-something Dukes fans sitting right behind me that tried to talk shit to my friend Andy for going to the bathroom in between series. "He must be going to change his tampon," the guy said in front of his young kid. And his wife piled on! Can we lock this shit down, JMU fans? Good grief.


Sam Houston and the Benefits of Easy Scheduling


Sam Houston State played a team in September called Oklahoma Panhandle State. That is not a joke. That's the team they opened up against. They won 59-21. OKPS -- I'm guessing that's the appropriate acronym, but obviously, no one worth talking to has any clue how the hell to abbreviate this midwestern masterpiece -- is a Division 2 School that plays in the Lone Star conference. The crown jewel of the OKPS athletic department, and I swear I'm not making this up, is its Varsity Rodeo Team.

Men's and women's teams, obviously. They wouldn't want people to think they're some kind of backward school full of rednecks.

Anyway, back to Sam Houston. It's not a new storyline with these Bearkats. They ran the table in a shitty conference and haven't really proven themselves. They've got a coach (KC Keeler) who thinks it's a travesty that they're only the No. 5 seed. A 56-43 win versus McNeese State is okay, I guess. Their most impressive win is holding on to beat Chattanooga last week 41-36, which I very vocally did not think would happen. Kudos to them for proving me wrong once.


However, I suspect they won't do it again. Sam Houston is an offensively gifted team, and will probably score a good number of points on Friday night. I'm going to say 30+. But their defensive numbers against mediocre teams (27ppg) suggest they will not be able to keep pace with a JMU team that has more playmakers on both sides of the ball. The traditional wisdom is that, in an offensive showdown, it's the defense that ends up making the difference. I'm looking for JMU's improved unit to give up points, but ultimately win the game with big stops in the second half.



West Virginia Locks Up Dana Holgorsen & Gets to 10 Wins



After a 24-21 win over Baylor, Dana took a few shots at the playoff selection committee, wondering aloud if the team didn't get the respect they deserved because they "win ugly." He followed up -- "all this team does is win." Well, except for the two games against Oklahoma teams, but yeah, Dana, your point is well-taken.

I actually have a column coming out this week that'll address this, but I've become increasingly frustrated with criticisms of Dana Holgorsen and Skyler Howard this year. Skyler isn't a perfect quarterback. His spectrum of performance can range from impressive to awful. There are drives where I watch him and go, "Geez, no wonder this guy didn't get any D1 scholarships." He can be frustrating, but when he's on, he's great to watch. I wish people were more patient with him. I wish people didn't boo him.

The Dana criticisms are infuriating though. For all of the descriptors we ascribe to West Virginians, entitled usually isn't one of them. Yet there's a surprisingly vocal portion of the fan base that is used to years of Big East championships and wants to fire Dana for failing to win Big 12 championships. They think West Virginia athletics is the center of the universe. They seem to not understand why wins are so much harder to achieve now, as if winning at Texas and winning at Rutgers were parallel events.

West Virginia football turns 125 this year. Dana Holgorsen just won 10 games for the ninth time in the history of the program. He's done it twice in six years, now, too. And if they can beat Miami -- which they certainly should -- the 2016 Mountaineers will tie the single-season record for 11 wins. (Other people who have coached multiple 10-win seasons in Morgantown: Nehlen, Don; Rodriguez, Rich. That is all.)

What Dana Holgorsen has done is simple in concept but difficult in execution. He's taken a talented-but-flawed regional program and built it into a Power-5 program that's deserving of respect. He's piping more West Virginia players into the NFL than any coach in the history of the program. He's showing growth as a coach. The program is showing growth. And next year, with a blue-chip quarterback available, the Mountaineers very well could challenge for its first Big 12 championship.

This year, with an erratic quarterback and so few returners on defense, was never supposed to be a year for success. Instead, West Virginia's depth and contrarian schemes propelled them to a 10-win regular season. In 2016, this WVU team has won in spite of its quarterback, not because of it. That's how many championship teams are built. It's nice to have more than one way to win these days.

Major congratulations to DH on a job well done. It's been ugly at times, but never unimpressive.

Choose your own Adventure Narrative: Some thoughts on the CFB Playoff Selections


Depending on which teams you like or hate, you can choose any number of complaints to lob into the committee's meeting room down in Texas. 

Some people seem to think Penn State got screwed because it won the Big 10 championship game, but was left out of the playoff. PSU won the best conference in college football, and along the way, they beat a very good Ohio State team that was included in the playoffs.

Also included: No. 4 seed Washington. The Pac-12 champions played bad teams in its out-of-conference schedule and beat them soundly. Meanwhile, PSU played Pitt and Temple, going 1-1 in each of those games. The Nittany Lions also lost to Michigan in conference play by approximately 3 million points.

The narrative was clear. If you want to make the playoff, schedule easy teams and win your conference. Reese Davis and other ESPN commentators recognized this in real time as the rankings were being revealed. It was bandied about quite a bit on Twitter.

I want to make the following counter-argument:


1. Each case is a little different, and trying to assign an overall narrative/scheduling strategy won't hold up over time.

2. Ohio State was included in the playoff because of their OOC wins, directly refuting the idea that easy OOC games are the definitive way to make the playoff.


Everyone knows what happened with Baylor in 2014, and Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby wants some sort of crazy explanation as to why Baylor wasn't included two years ago, but Washington and Ohio State were included this year for reasons that seem to fly in the face of the reasons provided against Baylor in 2014. But doesn't it make the most sense to take everything in proper context? 

Ohio State doesn't have the "extra data point" of a conference championship game, but did they need it? The Buckeyes pass the eye test, and they've got multiple wins over Top 10 teams. 

Washington played a bad OOC schedule, but they won a conference championship game and had multiple ranked wins in conference play. In 2014, Baylor didn't really have either.

In the case of Penn State, don't those early losses have to count for something? Additionally, you can give them credit for the Big 10 championship game if you like, but I view championships as a function of a team's greatness -- not an expansion of it. Penn State's win over Wisconsin doesn't hold more merit than Ohio State's win over Wisconsin just because the game was played in December as a "championship" game -- if anything, it's less valuable. Ohio State won at Camp Randall; Penn State won on a neutral field.


Penn State proved a lot of people wrong about how good of a team they were by winning the Big 10 championship. That includes me. But the idea of the playoff is to get the best four teams into the playoff. To me, that means finding a compromise between those who are the best and those who are the most deserving. By the end of the season, Penn State had proved they were at least deserving, but I'm not convinced they were one of the four best teams in the country. To me, the No. 5 ranking felt appropriate, though I wouldn't have had an issue with them at No 4, either. 



MBB: West Virginia 66, Virginia 57



I've yet to watch the film on this game -- it's currently queued up on my Xbox, for when I've got a spare 90 minutes -- but it's no small feat to beat a talented UVA team in Charlottesville. The Cavs haven't lost at JPJ in almost two years -- Duke beat them 69-63 on January 31, 2015, two months before winning the NCAA tournament.

West Virginia was dropped to No. 25 in the AP Poll after a brutally bad first half sunk them in a tournament final against Temple. Polls are reactive by nature, but that was a bad adjustment. This season, West Virginia is without Jaysean Paige (last season's leading scorer) and all-everything forward Devin Williams (left early for the NBA). Somehow, they might be better this year anyway. 

Under Huggins, West Virginia has always been a team that struggles to generate offense, which is the whole reason for the press in the first place. This year, though, West Virginia is getting more consistent shooting from mid-range. That means more chances to set up the press, as well as less reliance on it for offensive production. WVU was picked second in the Big 12 behind Kansas, and could legitimately end KU's reign. Huggins has had more success against the Jayhawks than any other team in the Big 12, and his style of play will likely confound this year's young Kansas team even more than it did an older, more savvy team during last year's three go-arounds.

It's a really great thing for college basketball that UVA and WVU have now split two games over the last two seasons. A budding Virginia-West Virginia rivalry could be an awesome addition to each school's calendar. Tony Bennett might be Bob Huggins' antithesis, but both are stupendously good coaches, and a recurring home-and-home series would be awesome for everyone involved.



Plus, maybe ESPN will finally realize West Virginia is its own state? But hey, I don't want to aim too high.

Vid of the Week: 


I would like to apologize to all the people I randomly sent this to without explanation last night. I was just... excited. Yeah. Very excited.

Debts and Diseases Double-Down






3-2 on the weekend. I didn't give it out in this tweet, but y'all know I was all over WVU+8 in MBB. This week, I'll start handing out CBB/NBA picks. I got on a real hot tear through December NBA lines last year -- we'll see if I can do it again this year. Merry Christmas to all.









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