Stats

Friday, October 4, 2019

UNC Preview

Well, obviously I've not been around since the Citadel.  I've been in mourning.  Meant to post before Temple, but didn't get to it, and didn't really care.  Does that make me a bad fan?  Maybe.  I still support this team and this coaching staff, although I'm growing increasingly concerned that our offensive coaching staff is not what I want it to be.  We'll see as the year progresses.

Moving on past the bad news, the good news is that our spreads have mostly been accurate this year.  The Citadel was the big outlier (we were favored by 25+ I believe).  Temple was favored by only about 8-9, but that's probably where the game should have been without the two disaster turnovers.  USF and Clemson were spot on.

So why is that good news?  Well, UNC is only favored by 9 or 10.  I expect that's about right.  Many will think its crazy, but that's recency bias.  You know, putting too much emphasis on what just happened.  UNC played Clemson very close (likely a fluke, and just Clemson escaping one of its 1 or 2 annual sleepwalking games).  And we just got blown out (but like I said, turnovers, plus Temple is not bad - actually, not much worse than UNC if you believe the computers.  Or Pitt/Miami for that matter, and better than VT, but I digress (digressing in a parenthetical?  Impressive!))

Anyway, back to not nonsense - I expect we'll play UNC close.  It'll be low scoring because our defense is OK and our offense is awful.  If its not low scoring, it won't be close.  We can't score, so anything "high scoring" wil be a UNC blowout.  For example, if UNC's QB has a good day, we'll be in trouble.  But I think our blitz packages and secondary are good enough to keep it close for a while, and maybe even pull the win if we get the turnovers this time.  Might also depend on whether UNC is deflated from its close Clemson loss, or angry about it.  We'll see, but I expect something like 24-10, bad guys.

Hope I'm wrong and we win, and as always, Let's Go Jackets!