Sagarin Predictions: Week 5

[Gopher07]

Things got neither better nor worse when it comes to predicting our final record with Sagarin's formulas, but some lines did shift. Notably, Northwestern is more of a favorite heading into the game than they have been all year (the numbers below would suggest that Vegas' 6.5 line is much too low ... we'll see about that one).

Also of note, Michigan's convincing win over BYU moved things very much in their favor.

Now is when the rubber meets the road - if Minnesota can upset Northwestern this weekend in Evanston, the rest of the season will look a lot more rosy than it does at the moment, particularly because two very winnable games follow. If it plays out as suggested below, making a bowl game might be a tall task in 2015 (something I'm sure not many of us thought possible at the start of the season).

Let's get the conference season started already!

I'm using three lines this year - the GOLDEN_MEAN spreads, the PREDICTOR spreads, and the RECENT spreads, found here.

Last week's post can be found here.

vs TCU L
@ Colorado State W
vs Kent State W
vs Ohio W
@ Northwestern (+15, +14.5, +11.5)
@ Purdue (-11, -5, -11.5)
vs Nebraska (-1, +4, -1)
vs Michigan (+8, +14.5, +5.5)
@ Ohio State (+21, +22.5, +20)
@ Iowa (+12, +14.5, +14.5)
vs Illinois (-5.5, +2, -8)
vs Wisconsin (+8, +14, +7)

Predicted Record [based on an average of the three models] 5-7 (2-6)

Likely wins (>6 point difference [average] in favor of Minnesota): @ Purdue
Likely toss-ups (within 6 points [average]): vs Nebraska, vs Illinois
Likely losses (>6 point difference [average] in favor of opponent): @ Northwestern, vs Michigan, @ Ohio State, @ Iowa, vs Wisconsin

 

['13Gopher]

I think Purdue will be our only B1G win.

 

[sonnygarcia]

Remember when the blind homers on the board were ripping Vegas's 5.5 wins and predicting 8-10. I'm sure they all still want to extend Kill another 5 years, so we can battle to make bowl games and watch us slug it out with the likes of Kent St and Ohio. This is what we get for the next however many years, status quo for Gopher football, but I just have to giggle at the Jerry Kill kool-aid everyone drinks around here. He'll continue to benefit from a bad BIG West and we'll all still love him for 6-7 wins a year, I'm sure.

 

[Gopher07]

I think Purdue will be our only B1G win.

Possible.

Last year at this time, we were predicted to go 4-4 in conference, but ended up at 5-3 (beat Nebraska & Michigan, lost to Illinois). At that time, we had just one "likely win" and a bunch of toss-ups (ended up winnin three of the four toss-up games). All in all, not too far off of the final record; if that's the case this year it's looking like 1-3 conference wins.

Two years ago at this time, it had us going 1-7 in conference, with just a win over Iowa. We would lose to the Hawkeyes, but went on to win four of our next seven games. That could also be the case this year.

 

[beach2133]

Remember when the blind homers on the board were ripping Vegas's 5.5 wins and predicting 8-10. I'm sure they all still want to extend Kill another 5 years, so we can battle to make bowl games and watch us slug it out with the likes of Kent St and Ohio. This is what we get for the next however many years, status quo for Gopher football, but I just have to giggle at the Jerry Kill kool-aid everyone drinks around here. He'll continue to benefit from a bad BIG West and we'll all still love him for 6-7 wins a year, I'm sure.

You make being a football fan sound like so much fun. Maybe try this: Watch the games, be happy if they win, get mad when they lose, enjoy the fall weather. Laying the groundwork for "I told you so's" seems exhausting and ultimately unfulfilling...maybe time to re-evaluate.

 

[Rescooter]

I think Purdue will be our only B1G win.

Are you saying this to get attention? You throw that out without any facts or reasons.

Seriously, we were one onside kick from beating the #3 team in the nation. While we haven't put together gaudy numbers against our OOC foes, we haven't had to, we've won. I can see Northwestern's defense being tough for us, but their Offense is one on the worst in a Power 5 conference. I think their rating is based on the Stanford game which was a signature win for them.

Nebraska, I'm not very impressed with Mike Riley at this point. He's working with Bo Pelini recruits which don't fit his system as well.

Michigan - seem to be regaining their Moxi. I'll label that as a game we could easily lose.

Ohio State - Upset? They have not looked invincible, but yes, I agree with the line.

Iowa - Have had the benefit of playing cupcakes. If we can get some of our depth back, I see a win in Iowa City.

Illinois - I see this as our most dominating performance. Bill Cubit has started strong, but he had the benefit of surprise. Now that he's been scouted, it will be an entirely different story.

Wisconsin - Vulnerable

I'm seeing 5-3 in B1G play. Losses to Michigan, OSU, and either NW/WI.

 

[El Amin Fan]

Thanks for posing these weekly, I enjoy them.

 

[GophersInIowa]

Remember when the blind homers on the board were ripping Vegas's 5.5 wins and predicting 8-10. I'm sure they all still want to extend Kill another 5 years, so we can battle to make bowl games and watch us slug it out with the likes of Kent St and Ohio. This is what we get for the next however many years, status quo for Gopher football, but I just have to giggle at the Jerry Kill kool-aid everyone drinks around here. He'll continue to benefit from a bad BIG West and we'll all still love him for 6-7 wins a year, I'm sure.

That's all we need to know about you. You're just like another supposed Gophers fan, GW. You'd rather be right than see the Gophers succeed. You'd rather we all be miserable and never hope or be excited. According to you, we should all be grumpy and negative all the time. If you can't ever enjoy being a fan, then what is the point?

The problem with posters like you is you only show up when things are bad to rip on everything and everyone. Call people idiots, morons, etc. Only come here to say a certain player sucks, but never say anything when someone plays well. When things do go well, you're no where to be seen.

 

['13Gopher]

Are you saying this to get attention? You throw that out without any facts or reasons.

Seriously, we were one onside kick from beating the #3 team in the nation. While we haven't put together gaudy numbers against our OOC foes, we haven't had to, we've won. I can see Northwestern's defense being tough for us, but their Offense is one on the worst in a Power 5 conference. I think their rating is based on the Stanford game which was a signature win for them.

Nebraska, I'm not very impressed with Mike Riley at this point. He's working with Bo Pelini recruits which don't fit his system as well.

Michigan - seem to be regaining their Moxi. I'll label that as a game we could easily lose.

Ohio State - Upset? They have not looked invincible, but yes, I agree with the line.

Iowa - Have had the benefit of playing cupcakes. If we can get some of our depth back, I see a win in Iowa City.

Illinois - I see this as our most dominating performance. Bill Cubit has started strong, but he had the benefit of surprise. Now that he's been scouted, it will be an entirely different story.

Wisconsin - Vulnerable

I'm seeing 5-3 in B1G play. Losses to Michigan, OSU, and either NW/WI.

No, I do not require any attention. However, do you have any facts that would lead you to believe we will win 5 games? You have plenty of "reasons" which are ridiculously vague and frankly just stabs in the dark. My reasons for not winning a B1G game are the failure of our offense against defenses that are not nearly as good as the defenses we will be playing for the next 9 weeks.

 

[dpodoll68]

No, I do not require any attention. However, do you have any facts that would lead you to believe we will win 5 games? You have plenty of "reasons" which are ridiculously vague and frankly just stabs in the dark. My reasons for not winning a B1G game are the failure of our offense against defenses that are not nearly as good as the defenses we will be playing for the next 9 weeks.

So you're just disregarding the 468 yards from this weekend, then?

 

['13Gopher]

So you're just disregarding the 468 yards from this weekend, then?

It would appear so, wouldn't it? I am not disregarding the embarrassing throws, poor reads and the fumbles which you appear to be disregarding.

 

[dpodoll68]

It would appear so, wouldn't it? I am not disregarding the embarrassing throws, poor reads and the fumbles which you appear to be disregarding.

How many fumbles did our offense lose?

No QB goes without some "embarrassing" throws, particularly college QBs. I'm looking at the stats and it says here that he completed almost 70% of his passes with zero turnovers. Good luck finding anyone else (without an obvious agenda) to agree with you in calling that "embarrassing".

Finally, last I checked, there's more to the offense than the QB. I'd invite you to find the list of teams this weekend who passed and rushed for more than 200 yards in both categories. It will be a short list.

 

[GopherHomer]

Yes - this may be a "down" year for our Gophers. Good thing is that a down year now represents 5 or 6 wins. Our program has come so far that we don't even have to worry about 2 or 3 win years even though we are ravaged with injuries and have an inconsistent offense. Sonnygarcia is the worst, and he only strengthens my Gopher fandom just so he is proved wrong. I hope he gets bit by a squirrel.

 

[West Fargo Gopher Fan]

Yes - this may be a "down" year for our Gophers. Good thing is that a down year now represents 5 or 6 wins. Our program has come so far that we don't even have to worry about 2 or 3 win years even though we are ravaged with injuries and have an inconsistent offense. Sonnygarcia is the worst, and he only strengthens my Gopher fandom just so he is proved wrong. I hope he gets bit by a squirrel.

Agree. Also if 3-1 is the start of a down year I'll take it. Expecially when the loss is to a top 5 team by less than a touchdown.

 

[SonOfTheVarsity]

No, I do not require any attention. However, do you have any facts that would lead you to believe we will win 5 games? You have plenty of "reasons" which are ridiculously vague and frankly just stabs in the dark. My reasons for not winning a B1G game are the failure of our offense against defenses that are not nearly as good as the defenses we will be playing for the next 9 weeks.

Outside of TCU, the Gophers have, by a comfortable margin, compiled more total yards in each game than the opposing defense has allowed on average. Not saying the eye test has looked incredibly promising, but this is some pretty lazy analysis.

 

[Clark W. Griswold]

I think Purdue will be our only B1G win.

No, I do not require any attention. However, do you have any facts that would lead you to believe we will win 5 games? You have plenty of "reasons" which are ridiculously vague and frankly just stabs in the dark. My reasons for not winning a B1G game are the failure of our offense against defenses that are not nearly as good as the defenses we will be playing for the next 9 weeks.

I think your reasons are very vague as well. Send me a message if you would like to make a wager, I'll bet the over on 1.5 big ten wins.

 

['13Gopher]

I think your reasons are very vague as well. Send me a message if you would like to make a wager, I'll bet the over on 1.5 big ten wins.

I will not wager for the simple reason that I will be ecstatic to get 2 B1G wins. I am not going on College GameDay or Sportscenter to explain myself so I had no idea deep, professional analysis was required. There were fumbles we recovered and interceptions that Ohio dropped...I will not go into deep analysis, but what I have now seen two weeks in a row from our offense will not cut it in the B1G.

 

[FredEness]

Remember when the blind homers on the board were ripping Vegas's 5.5 wins and predicting 8-10. I'm sure they all still want to extend Kill another 5 years, so we can battle to make bowl games and watch us slug it out with the likes of Kent St and Ohio. This is what we get for the next however many years, status quo for Gopher football, but I just have to giggle at the Jerry Kill kool-aid everyone drinks around here. He'll continue to benefit from a bad BIG West and we'll all still love him for 6-7 wins a year, I'm sure.

Thank you Patrick.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

 

[SonOfTheVarsity]

I will not wager for the simple reason that I will be ecstatic to get 2 B1G wins. I am not going on College GameDay or Sportscenter to explain myself so I had no idea deep, professional analysis was required. There were fumbles we recovered and interceptions that Ohio dropped...I will not go into deep analysis, but what I have now seen two weeks in a row from our offense will not cut it in the B1G.

Here's the Gophers total yards/game during non-con in the last 3 seasons:

2013: 387.5 yds/game
2014: 336 yds/game
2015: 377.5 yds/game

The last 2 games alone, we've averaged 378 yds/game. And I'll say that this year's non-con schedule is undoubtedly the toughest of the 3 years.

Do you see any reason why this year's offense won't cut it in the B1G and will doom us to a 1-win B1G season, but last year's got us 5 wins, and the year before that got us 4?

I'm not a huge fan of this offense (look at my posts last week), but this argument is pretty weak.

Now I'll discontinue my "deep, professional analysis" that took 2 minutes.

 

[Word]

I think it's fun to look at Sagarin ratings. I even use them at the end of the year to help pick bowl games. But, they can be very flawed in using score margin as a way to predict games, especially this early in the year. It especially discounts teams like the Gophers that tend not to run up the score when they do have a lead (we just run the clock out).

I wouldn't fret too much over them at this point. We'll win at least 2 big ten games.

 

[1983]

All of you make me wonder if you watch any sports at all. We are a young team with several key injuries that have effected our abilities on the field. Our Offense is having trouble getting going but made significant improvements last game. It is impossible to predict what is going to happen this week let alone the following games. Too many factors changing each week. Spin it how you want, good teams figure it out and win when they play poorly. Lets just let it play out. I feel we will get better each week and keep winning. NW has their issues too so it will be a good close game.

 

[MNVCGUY]

Yes - this may be a "down" year for our Gophers. Good thing is that a down year now represents 5 or 6 wins. Our program has come so far that we don't even have to worry about 2 or 3 win years even though we are ravaged with injuries and have an inconsistent offense. Sonnygarcia is the worst, and he only strengthens my Gopher fandom just so he is proved wrong. I hope he gets bit by a squirrel.

I get the sentiment but 5-6 win seasons haven't been that unusual for us since the mid 90's. In fact winning 5, 6, or 7 games would be right in line with what the Gophers have been doing consistently since Mason took over from Wacker. It's those 8, 9, 10 win seasons that have been a lot tougher to come by with any sort of regularity.

 

[Gopher07]

I get the sentiment but 5-6 win seasons haven't been that unusual for us since the mid 90's. In fact winning 5, 6, or 7 games would be right in line with what the Gophers have been doing consistently since Mason took over from Wacker. It's those 8, 9, 10 win seasons that have been a lot tougher to come by with any sort of regularity.

Even if you go back to Holtz (1984), the median # of wins in a season is 6, the mean is 5.2 and the mode (most commonly occuring value) is 6. Removing the Wacker and Brewster eras, the median wins is 6, the mean is 5.8 and the mode is 6. With the exception of two dumpster-fire coaches, Minnesota has pretty consistently been a six-win team over the past three decades.

 

[GophersInIowa]

There were fumbles we recovered and interceptions that Ohio dropped...

Believe it or not, those things happen with everyone. Our defense has dropped several interceptions this year as well.

but what I have now seen two weeks in a row from our offense will not cut it in the B1G.

I get the Kent St game, but Ohio was a completely different performance. Our offense averaged over 58 yards per drive and 6.9 yards per play on Saturday. That is very good. That kind of performance absolutely will cut it in the B1G.

 

[West Fargo Gopher Fan]

We struggled last year in non confrence as well. We got crushed by TCU and the next week only had 7 passing yards against San Jose State. Everyone was saying then we will only win 1-2 Big Ten games. We won 5 B10 games last year.
Wait and see. Some of these injured guys will get healthy.

 

[FanSinceTheFifties]

How many fumbles did our offense lose?

No QB goes without some "embarrassing" throws, particularly college QBs. I'm looking at the stats and it says here that he completed almost 70% of his passes with zero turnovers. Good luck finding anyone else (without an obvious agenda) to agree with you in calling that "embarrassing".

Finally, last I checked, there's more to the offense than the QB. I'd invite you to find the list of teams this weekend who passed and rushed for more than 200 yards in both categories. It will be a short list.

Well told.

 

[DarrenTheGreek]

We struggled last year in non confrence as well. We got crushed by TCU and the next week only had 7 passing yards against San Jose State. Everyone was saying then we will only win 1-2 Big Ten games. We won 5 B10 games last year.
Wait and see. Some of these injured guys will get healthy.

+1

Well said. I'm completely shocked at the short term memory some people have. It's like they've never watched football before this season.

My prediction: Gophers start out the conference season 3-0.

 

[DarrenTheGreek]

2012:
MN starts 4-0, Iowa starts out 2-2 with losses to Iowa State and Central Michigan. MN is trending up, Iowa trending down. Yet Iowa smoked us 31-13 in week 1.

2013:
MN starts 4-0, Iowa starts out 3-1 with a loss to Northern Illinois and a mediocre win against Mizzou State. Yet Iowa smoked us 23-7 in week 1.

Non-conference does not come close to telling the full story. I feel confident in our boys entering the conference season. This isn't the first rodeo for these coaches or players. They'll be ready.

 

[Killjoy]

Remember when the blind homers on the board were ripping Vegas's 5.5 wins and predicting 8-10. I'm sure they all still want to extend Kill another 5 years, so we can battle to make bowl games and watch us slug it out with the likes of Kent St and Ohio. This is what we get for the next however many years, status quo for Gopher football, but I just have to giggle at the Jerry Kill kool-aid everyone drinks around here. He'll continue to benefit from a bad BIG West and we'll all still love him for 6-7 wins a year, I'm sure.

Rosemountain is that you?

 

[GopherHomer]

I get the sentiment but 5-6 win seasons haven't been that unusual for us since the mid 90's. In fact winning 5, 6, or 7 games would be right in line with what the Gophers have been doing consistently since Mason took over from Wacker. It's those 8, 9, 10 win seasons that have been a lot tougher to come by with any sort of regularity.

I agree with your facts, and that was kind of my point. If we end up 5-6 wins this year, most fans will be at least slightly disappointed to jumping off a bridge (or in the case of sonnygarcia - happy because he hates the Gophers). Our recent history dictates that 5-6 wins is about what we should expect as a median-type season. But, with what we are going through this year with the injuries, schedule, and lack of offensive proficiency this to me feels more like a bottom or "down" year and that is a credit to where Kill has brought this program.