Monday, November 29, 2010

PROVE IT by ST

Get the cliches ready. It's the Civil War. Throw the records out. You never know what can happen. I buy this in some cases. If the Ducks play their worst game of the year by far. If Darron Thomas throws 5 interceptions(like Joey in 2000). Maybe, somehow, Oregon State can hang with this team and steal it. I don't see it. I see the USC romp by OSU a borderline abberation. The 2010 Beavs are fair, maybe mediocre. They lost to awful teams like UCLA and the Washington Schools. The defense is just plain bad when if faces a solid, balanced offense. They can't get the opposition off the field. Stanford converted 9 of 15 on third down. Wazzou was 10 of 17! Let's not forget, last year the Ducks rolled up nearly 500 total yards of offense and turned it over twice. They passed and ran for more than 200 yards each. This against an Oregon State team that was Pac 10 champion caliber. Oregon is much stronger in all aspects of the game in 2010, the Beavs weaker. Their defense failed to find a replacement top playmaker Keaton Kristick or David Pa'aluhi. Quizz is simply not as dangerous without James. Ryan Katz as a sophomore is not in the same league as Sean Canfield who was as good a QB as we had in the Pac 10 last year. Nothing is for sure, but it's gonna take more than anger, desire and want to convince me OSU has a shot to win this game.
As for Auburn barely climbing past Oregon in the BCS rankings, it's completely and totally meaningless. For openers, I'm a bit surprised the computers have the Ducks this close to the Tigers. I have bad news, the Pac 10 is 2 elite teams and 8 that are either very mediocre, fair or just plain bad. Really? Washington wins as many conference games as anyone besides Oregon and Stanford? Time to bag the no respect, or East Coast bias whine. It's moronic. Just worry about this team beating Oregon State then taking on Auburn from what is clearly the best league in the nation.
So much NFL and Boise State's nightmare and the decent showing by Dana Altman's crew, plus a few surprises coming at ya!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Agree 100% all around. Much like the Cal game was an aberration about Oregon (apparently Arizona failed to receive or read that "blueprint"), the USC win by Oregon St. was an outlier (and I think, like Oregon-Cal, was about USC playing bad while at the same time Oregon St. played probably their best game this year).

Also agree about the Pac-10 this year. It's bad, plain and simple.

One other thing, I am glad Oregon didn't have to play Stanford around this time because that team is a beast right now...

Anonymous said...

Jeff Sagarin, the original of computer rankings programmers, doesn't agree on the mediocrity of the Pac-10. Check out his computer rankings at http://www.usatoday.com/sports/sagarin/fbc10.htm

He has the Pac-10 as the best of conferences. Every Pac-10 team has a strength of schedule ranking in the single digits, except for UO and UAz, which don't have to play themselves.

His Predictor rankings, which include margin of victory, have Auburn at number 11. The one he reports to the BCS has them #1, with Oregon right behind.