Week 6 Preview - Virginia

I haven’t actually seen very many Tech fans on any of the sites I read making predictions for this week. The few I have seen are, somewhat predictably, all over the map, except that no one really thinks we’ll get blown out. But I have seen a close loss, a tossup, a close win, and an easy win. To that I respond, “yep, that’s about right”.

To this point, both teams have been very inconsistent. Virginia has only played two games of consequence. I don’t care too much about them soundly beating Richmond and VMI, except to say that they must be better than the last couple of years, since they used to be in tight games with teams like Richmond. However, UVA could beat those teams easily and be pretty good, or they could still be pretty bad. As for their two games of consequence, they looked good in a loss at Southern Cal, and they looked real bad in a loss at home against FSU.

On the other hand, maybe that isn’t so inconsistent. Southern Cal hasn’t looked like a very good team this year, so maybe keeping it close on the road doesn’t mean much. And FSU has looked really good in every game this year except that little game they played in Norman, Oklahoma. Maybe that was a fluke, FSU is really good, USC is not very good, and thus UVA is actually consistently not very good. Granted, Southern Cal obviously has a lot of talent, but they have a depth problem, a possible coaching problem, and a likely motivation problem. So that explanation could be right.

According to Sagarin, UVA is 12 points worse than FSU on a neutral field, and 7 points worse than USC on a neutral field. Sagarin adjusts by 3 points for home field. So they should lose at USC by 10 (actually lost by 3) and should lost at home to FSU by 9 (actually lost by 20). So maybe they are inconsistent. They are much more consistent according to Phil Steele, who has UVA roughly 20 points worse than FSU, and 8 worse than USC.

Georgia Tech is unquestionably inconsistent. The computers have us 6 (Steele) and 3 (Sagarin) points worse than North Carolina (who we beat on the road) and 12 (Sagarin) and 13 (Steele) points better than Kansas (who we lost to). The scores are pretty far off in the case of Wake and N.C. State as well, even though both computers think we should beat Wake and lose to State, as we did.

Trying to predict what two inconsistent teams will do is about like trying to guess what they are going to write about next on everydayshouldbesaturday.com (great site by the way, hilarious, although I must confess I don’t believe I really get about 50% of the jokes). Just trust me, that means it is hard to guess. And I haven’t exactly been the most accurate with my predictions lately, picking two easy wins for GT. Ok, I’ve been awful. Absolutely atrocious really. But here goes nothing…

For this week I’ll predict a tougher than I would like for it to be 10 point win for GT. But that is 10 points with a late TD to seal a victory in an otherwise very nerve racking game.

Virginia is equally difficult to figure out in terms of how they play. They were a balanced offense against Southern Cal. They could only pass against FSU. Of course that was only in the second half. They only managed 40 total yards in the first half (260 in the second after the game was decided). Defensively, they gave up more passing yards to USC and more rushing yards to FSU.

The real problem in trying to figure out Virginia is that they have a new head coach and they have only played two games that really matter. But I think the one thing that is clear is they are better than last year.

As for us, well, I keep expecting us to get better, mostly because I have a lot of faith in Coach Johnson. But obviously we haven’t done it yet. I really hope we start making progress, because we only have two more games before the competition gets really tough.

Defensively, we did look better last week, but again that could be just because Wake was not very good. I don’t really know what to make of that fact that London and several other of UVA’s coaches once coached under Groh. Groh was quoted in the papers this week as saying that they will have an advantage because they know how he thinks, and they know his system and the ways he adjusts it. I think that could be Groh attempting some trickery. It certainly could be an advantage for UVA’s staff, but it also could be an advantage for Groh if he is able to use the fact that he knows what they think he will do in certain situations. I guess we will find out how tricky Groh is.

But really, at home, we probably should be able to win this game even if they know very well how Groh is going to coach this game. Our defenders are still free to defeat blocks and cover receivers, and if Johnson can get the offense going, we could score a lot of points. But, pretty much everything going into this game is a big IF. And just to make matters even more complicated, UVA has seemed to have our number over the years, at least until last year.

As for how the game will go, UVA the last few years has tended to be pretty strong on both lines, but didn’t have tremendous team speed. Given that, I would expect them to be able to run the ball on us fairly well. That should open up their passing offense, so it will be up to Groh to do a good job of taking away the right things at the right time (rather than taking away most things most of the time, like you’d like). Offensively, we should be able to hurt them with our pitch plays, and hopefully that will open up the rest of the offense, but that assumes we will block better, both on the line and on the edge. And that assumes we will actually pitch the ball some. If we play like we did against Wake, we probably won’t score a touchdown until the fourth quarter again. And then only if we start to play better in the fourth quarter again.

Let’s take a look at all the usual numbers. First the “talent”, based on espn.com’s recruiting rankings. I’ll preface this by telling you there is a significant negative correlation so far between the more talented team and points scored in the game… (for people reading this who didn’t actually attend GT, that means so far this season, the more talented team based on my analysis has been losing pretty much every week).

	2007			2008			2009			2010
	GT	UVA		GT	UVA		GT	UVA		GT	UVA
Best	81	79		80	78		80	79		80	83
Top 5	79.4	78.4		78	76.2		79.4	78.4		79	79.4
Top 10	78.5	76.7		77.3	74.5		78.8	77.8		78.2	78.4
Avg.	75.65	75.23		76.53	74.09		76.85	76.37		77.06	76.7
Total Players	20	13		15	11		21	19		16	20

Overall we appear to have a decent edge, but not its not much. Although since we lost to Kansas (less talented than us) beat UNC (more talented) and lost by a lot to State (about the same as us) I am not sure what this is worth. Additionally, UVA has brought in close to 10 players a year that espn.com never got around to rating, so those players can’t be counted. But there are the numbers we do have.

Here are the stats on the season.

	GT	UVA
Rush Yards Per Game	298.2	126.25
Rush Yards Per Carry	5.58	3.8
Rush Yards Allowed	156.4	143.25
Rush Yards Allowed/Carry	4.1	4.15
Pass Yards Per Game	90	273.25
Pass Yards Per Att.	6.8	7.6
Pass Yards Allowed	191.4	174
Pass Yards Allowed/Att.	7.6	5.9
Yards Per Play	5.8	5.8
Yards Per Play Allowed	5.1	5.0
Points Per Game	29.6	27.5
Points Allowed Per Game	25.4	17.8

You can see they pass for a little over twice as many yards as they run. We have been pretty decent against the pass this year, but not great. They do not run the ball very well. 3.8 yards per carry is low, and half their games were played against VMI and Richmond. That may help us. Surely if they cant run that well on those teams, our run defense can put up a respectable performance. Their run defense looks pretty good on paper, but again those stats are compiled against a questionable schedule. FSU ran all over them last week, putting up 290 yards in the first half, and most of those were on the ground.

I see nothing there to refute my contention that we probably should win by about 10 points. If we play well, it could be a lot more than that, but then again, if they play well, they could win. I don’t think I need to remind anyone that we can lose to Virginia.

My goals for the week:

Offense

Score 28 points. This is a low goal, but right now I’ll take it.

Gain 400 yards. Same as above.

No more than one turnover.

Defense

Hold them to no more than 17 points. FSU shut them out until the game was decided.

Hold them to 350 yards or less. This is only a little less than their average.

Force at least two turnovers.

I am not aiming nearly as high as usual with those goals, but after the last two weeks, I will take any win here so long as it looks like we are improving.

Go Jackets!