Happy Gameday Saturday Cougs, and let me just say what a LONG day this is going to be as we wait for the Cougs and Bruins to get down on it tonight at 7:30 (or in the case of our good friend Sutra, 10-FLIPPIN-30 Eastern Standard!). Seriously, west-coasters, think about that for a minute – imagine waiting until 10:30 to watch the Cougs?!? That would, as they say, SUCK. To put that another way, Saturday Night Live will be over BEFORE the Coug-UCLA game finishes up tonight.
Anyway, the Coug flags are placed amazingly well today. It’s almost like today’s show is “ESPN Presents: The WSU Flag” and somewhere in the credits it says “and special guest star, ESPN Gameday”.
And for the last time – EA, your hair looks fine! Just stop already!
Great job as always by Will for the screen caps (and you can find his albums here).
So last week at this time, I posted that even though I picked the Cougs to lose a close one at CU, I was starting to feel a change in the wind. That they were going to somehow find a way, and the intangibles were going to play a big part, blah blah blah. Anyway, it worked out of course, and here we sit at 3-1 with another chance to take a step forward tonight. So do I feel a change in the wind this week???……Well, no, unfortunately I’m not there yet.
See, no matter what I think about this game, I just personally can’t get past the “basicness” of what we will see tonight, and that’s UCLA running the football. We offered no evidence last year that we can stop the run consistently – did you know we not only gave up an AVERAGE of 220 yards per game on the ground last year, but allowed a whopping 5.6 yards per carry – but yeah, that was LAST YEAR. Things are better in 2011, there is no doubt about it. The defense is allowing 3.61 yards per carry, which is actually pretty respectable and a huge uptick in performance compared to 2010. So we’ve got that going for us, which of course, is good.
THAT IS, until you start to peel back the layers of the onion a bit. The numbers are, how shall we put this – skewed? San Diego St roughed up the Cougs on the ground, to the tune of 227 yards and 4 rushing TD’s…..and 5.2 yards per carry in the process. CU ran the ball effectively as well, 161 yards and 4.2 yards per carry. And in three games overall vs. FBS teams, the Cougs are giving up 162 rushing yards per game, on 4.2 yards per carry. Not the worst in the country, but still not very good either.
So how did they get to 3.6 yards per carry in the rushing-D department? Simply put, Idaho State. In that game, the D held the Bengals to 23 rushing yards….ON 25 CARRIES! That’s less than one yard per rushing attempt, which is absolutely horrible. But then again, as a Coug fan you should expect WSU to dominate that team from Pocatello that was over-matched in every facet of the game.
And then I look at what UCLA is going to throw at us, and that’s where this match-up has me tossing and turning. Did you know UCLA has gone over 200 yards rushing in three out of five games played so far this year? And even though one of those games was against San Jose State, where they had 272 yards on the ground, still, they didn’t get to play an “Idaho State” type opponent that simply had no chance. And that on the season, they are averaging 5.1 yards per carry? And even in their loss to Stanford they averaged almost 5 yards per carry (4.9)?
To really understand that rushing yards per carry number, at 5.1 that’s good for second place in the Pac-12 right now, behind only the Quack Attack and their fabulous 7.1 ypc average. But even though UCLA’s QB play isn’t great, and everyone in the world knows they are going to run it? They STILL can ram it down your throat out of the pistol offense!
The point to all this? There has been a lot of talk that the Cougs are much better vs. the run compared to what we saw last year, so we shouldn’t worry about it tonight. And as much as I want to believe that the defensive line will be up to the task, and the speedy linebackers are going to maintain their responsibilities, flow to the ball and stuff it?? Well….I just have a bad feeling, and that hasn’t changed.
Sorry to be Debbie Downer in all this.
But hey, not all is lost! If the Cougs can at least rise up and slow down the run early in the game, or even if they hold the line for the first half, we might be in great shape. Especially if we can see the Coug offense jump out to a quick lead, and UCLA may have to abandon that powerful running game and be forced to pass. And there is no doubting the ability of the Coug passing game, and Marshall and his boys have enough weapons to move it on pretty much anyone. SO THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE!
Here’s hoping we are all enjoying a victory beer or two tonight, and we can get jacked-n-pumped for how huge that Stanford game could be next Saturday. Enjoy the LONG day today, and of course, GO COUGS!
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