Week 2 Preview - Kansas

If you go by what happened last week, this should be a very easy win for GT. We won fairly easily against a pretty good FCS team, while Kansas lost to an FCS team coming off of a 3-8 season. Based on that, you could argue that Kansas is even worse than S.C. St. But I don’t think that is exactly right.

So what are some reasons that we should not go by what happened last week? First of all, Kansas may have been looking ahead to us. Also, it is fairly common for teams under a new coach to make the biggest improvement from week 1 to week 2. (this is also fairly common for any team, but in my opinion especially for a team under a first year coach). Additionally, they match up differently against us, although granted it is a little difficult to imagine that we match up less favorably than North Dakota St. in very many ways.

Basically, I do not really know how to explain last week. I don’t really believe that N.D. St. is actually better than Kansas, but they did win. I still have to assume that Kansas will have significantly better talent than S.C. St. did. The box score makes it appear that Kansas outplayed the Bison by a decent margin. They outgained them almost 2 to 1 (293 to 168) and they lost mostly due to losing the turnover battle 3 to 1, including an interception thrown from inside N.D. St. ten yard line. At a minimum that drive should have been 3 points which would have sent the game into overtime.

At any rate, let’s look at the stats from last week.

Georgia Tech Offense against Kansas Defense

	Georgia Tech For	Kansas Against
Rush Yards	372	73
Yards Per Carry	6.6	2.3
Pass Yards	12	95
Yards Per Attempt	1.5	4.3
Yards Per Play	5.8	3.1
Points	41	6

And Kansas Offense against Georgia Tech Defense

	Kansas For	Georgia Tech Against
Rush Yards	96	178
Yards Per Carry	3.0	4.6
Pass Yards	197	94
Yards Per Attempt	6.0	3.8
Yards Per Play	4.5	4.3
Points	3	10

So we see some intriguing matchups. Kansas did an excellent job defending the run last week. Something tells me their run defense will be put under a little more pressure this week, but it will be interesting to see. Ditto for the 6.6 yards per carry we picked up against the 2.3 they gave up, and the 41 points we scored as compared to the 6 they allowed.

On the other side of the ball, we did not do a terribly good job against the run. You might figure that Kansas would be better at running that S.C. St., but then again you would figure we will be better on run defense than N.D. St. We did an excellent job against the pass last week, and that was against an experienced senior QB. Even though he plays for an FCS school, Long may well be better than Kansas’ Qb’s, since they are breaking in two new ones and neither looked good against N.D. St. last week. That should be a strength for us, but Kansas likes to pass. At the very least, since they only scored 3 on N.D. St., and we only gave up 10, you would hope that we can keep Kansas from scoring many points.

Let’s take a look at the relative talent levels of Kansas and GT. These are the four classes that would now be seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen, but I have not graphed the class that would be redshirt seniors, because espn no longer has that class in its archives.

According to ESPN.com’s recruiting rankings (they give each player a grade on a scale from 60 ish to 100):

	2007			2008			2009			2010
	GT	KU		GT	KU		GT	KU		GT	KU
Best	81	76		80	80		80	77		80	79
Top 5	79.4	75.6		78	78		79.4	77		79	77.6
Top 10	78.5	72.5		77.3	76.3		78.8	76.8		78.2	76.3
Avg.	75.65	71.58		76.53	75.3		76.85	75.66		77.06	75.62
Total Players	20	12		15	13		21	18		16	13

You can see that according to espn’s evaluation we have a pretty significant advantage in talent. In each category our advantage is slight, but we literally are ahead in every single category, except for two ties. This may be a tad misleading, since Kansas during these four years Kansas has recruited 8, 12, 8 and 6 players respectively that espn never got around to ranking (kept the default ranking of “40”, I did not count those in the averages). Nevertheless, this is the information we have. I would say its fair to conclude we are the more talented team overall.

So, let’s get to some predictions. Starting when Kansas has the ball, I expect our defense to perform well. It is not clear what to expect from Kansas. They used to run a spread passing attack, so that is the kind of personnel they have. However, Gill has said he wants to establish the running attack. We do know that they failed to gain 300 yards, failed to score a touchdown, and only averaged 4.5 yards per play against North Dakota St. I would expect us to hold them to similar numbers. They may make significant strides this week in practice (in a new offense, you don’t start to really figure it out until you play against someone else, then when you get a week to practice it again, you may really see progress), but I still don’t want to see us give up much more than N.D. St. did.

As for us on offense, I am quite confident that our offense is much better than N.D. St.’s, so it is hard to say what to expect. I do know from reading Kansas blogs today that their fans feel their defensive line looked undersized and weak, especially in the middle. That means we should be able to compete up front, and hopefully even win the battle, and if that is the case they are doomed. If we can outplay them up front this could be another 56 point 600 yard beatdown like Vanderbilt was.

I will set these goals for the week:

Offense

At least 475 total yards, and at least 350 on the ground.

At least 42 points

No more than one turnover

Defense

No more than 300 yards

No more than 4.5 yards per play allowed

At least 3 sacks and one turnover forced

No more than 14 points

I think those goals are attainable, but again I aim high, so it will be tough.

In my preseason predictions I called this as a 14 point win for us. I will still grudgingly accept that, but given that Kansas lost to an FCS team, I will only be happy with a 21-24 point win and hopefully even more than that.

Let’s go Jackets!