This year SB Nation has #blessed us with access to some really fun data sets. There is an “Advanced Stats” tag on this story that will take you a boat load of content that other sites are creating with the new information. While week 3 is seemingly a bit of a dud in terms of big match ups, there are still a lot of games with implications for WSU’s ranking throughout the rest of the season.
What follows is a series of charts from our new data sets from SB Nation. Each chart looks at total yards throughout a game and gold stars represent offensive touchdowns (I’m still working out getting the final scores for overtime or when a FG or TD is scored on the final play to show correctly as an FYI and 2017 data is being weird). The goal is to see what the flow of a game was and where team’s either took off or stalled out. With that in mind, let’s look at some team’s around WSU in the ranking’s and how they performed thus far this season or in that same match up last year.
Stanford at UCF (#17) - 12:30 PM PST - ESPN (UCF -8.5)
Stanford heads to Orlando to take on the Golden Knights after UCF rolled past FAU last week 48-14. The below chart looks at how freshman quarterback David Mills kept Stanford in the game vs USC, but the Trojans pulled away in the second half. Hopefully K.J. Costello’s return means an upset for the Tree in Disney and the Cougs climbing into the teen’s in the polls.
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Iowa (#19) at Iowa State - 1 PM PST - FS1 (Iowa -1.5)
The CyHawk trophy is on the line in Ames Saturday. Last season was a 13-3 win for Iowa, the game was 6-3 at the start of the 4th and the Hawkeyes rode an 83 yard drive to pay dirt to put the game away. Iowa State struggled in week 1 vs Northern Iowa and long term it’s probably better for WSU for Iowa State to lose given they’re well positioned to make a run in the Big-12 this year and could be back in the rankings with a win, but I want GameDay in Salt Lake when the Cougars take on Utah (knock on all of the wood). I’m pulling for Iowa State to upset Iowa and give the Cougs a chance to move past the Hawkeyes in the rankings and make our late September game vs Utah one Corso and company can’t pass up.
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Michigan State (#18) vs Arizona State - 1 PM PST - FOX (Sparty -15)
Arizona State, down 13-6 in the 4th quarter, rallied last season vs Sparty and tied the game via a 27 yard TD pass to N’Keal Harry. ASU then drove 67 yards to the Michigan State 10 to kick a field goal as time expired. Ignore the score being tied on this one (per above, working on fixing that), but Arizona State rode the big play ability of Harry down the stretch. Michigan State had an impressive showing last week, and while true freshman QB Jayden Daniels has a lot of potential I find it hard to imagine a world where ASU is overcoming a 15 point spread and winning out right, but Forks Up! Go Pac-12!
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Florida (#9) at Kentucky - 4 PM PST - ESPN (Florida -8.5)
Florida travels to Lexington looking to avenge last year’s loss to Kentucky this week. The Wildcats lost QB Terry Wilson for the season and have a lot of new faces on offense so an upset is unlikely, but here is a look at how Kentucky did it last year. It was a lot of ground and pound with Benny Snell, Jr, and while they scored 3 touchdowns on the ground vs Toledo last week, I’d temper my expectations on a repeat of last year’s upset. Root for Kentucky, but don’t get your hopes up.
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Clemson (#1) at Syracuse - 4 PM PST - ESPN (Clemson 28.5)
Last time Clemson traveled to the Carrier Dome they kicked off a voodoo filled college football weekend on Friday the 13th that led to them losing, WSU losing and an otherwise wild weekend of college football where seven ranked teams lost. The ‘Cuse took Clemson to the wire last season at Death Valley only to get usurped by two Travis Etienne touchdowns as the Tigers erased a 10-point deficit to win in Trevor Lawrence’s debut. Syracuse got steam rolled by Maryland last week and Clemson looks down right unbeatable in 2019. Syracuse is out of the top 25, so not really a threat to WSU’s ranking and if they pulled a wild upset it would give them a marquee win that would help them move up the polls as the seasons goes on. Go Tigers.
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Which way are you leaning this week as you bounce around the college football landscape? Where do you think the Cougs will end up in next week’s polls?