UCF in top 30 of ESPN Power Index, projected 10 wins, 12% chance to win out
- Thread starter UCFProf
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I never did quite understand how S. Florida got a preseason ranking. On the flip side, lets keep the Maryland game in perspective. They were not ranked. They beat an unranked Texas squad on the road that didn't really have a great game. The sports books only had them as a 3 point favorite, so it's not a shocking upset or anything. Plus the QB situation changed the game entirely.
But make no mistake - UCF showed up for this game. We gonna smack S. Florida in the mouth later this year to get NYE bowl game.
But make no mistake - UCF showed up for this game. We gonna smack S. Florida in the mouth later this year to get NYE bowl game.
There were four great signs of major growth from game 1:
- lots of sacks (vs one late-game sack vs FIU) and shut down a run-based offense: UCF DLine that won battle in the trenches against a very good and experienced Maryland line.
- zero turnovers (vs 2 last game) and intensity to finish drives despite being pinned back inside the 10.
- line that not only protected Milton even better (no sacks, seldom flushed from pocket), but in game 2 also created running lanes up for big gains that just weren't ever there in game 1: we doubled yds/carry average.
- demonstrated our new-found depth and balance to a much greater degree so opponent couldn't double team our stars or wear us down.
IMO, the only perspective required here is that it was a clear top 30 blowout win on the road. Texas only lost on the road to a #4 USC team by a field goal. That Maryland win in Austin is still impressive. The fact that Maryland wasn't in the top 25 doesn't diminish the fact that they were a consensus top 30 team in the country going into the weekend. The difference between the teams in the back end of the top 25 and those receiving the top vote totals that barely miss top 25 is miniscule.
This victory is something that USF will not even have a chance to replicate until they come to Orlando on Black Friday due to their pathetic schedule.
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USF is ranked because it's basically a continuation ranking from the end of last year and they didn't lose a lot of players. Very lame rankingsI never did quite understand how S. Florida got a preseason ranking. On the flip side, lets keep the Maryland game in perspective. They were not ranked. They beat an unranked Texas squad on the road that didn't really have a great game. The sports books only had them as a 3 point favorite, so it's not a shocking upset or anything. Plus the QB situation changed the game entirely.
But make no mistake - UCF showed up for this game. We gonna smack S. Florida in the mouth later this year to get NYE bowl game.
Agreed. As far as our schedule compared to them, USF wouldn't have had a chance to match GT if we had played them, Memphis, and maybe even Navy and SMU on the road
Their only challenge they have is maybe is Houston at home. Pathetic
Also toughness and being physical. Frosty said he wanted to see more of that. Mission accomplished.
From the way people talk about Hill's injury you'd think they lost a Heisman candidate, not a true freshman QB starting his 2nd game ever. Perhaps the game is tighter, but that was a 28 point victory against a team favored by 4 in their own house. QBs are important, but damn, they are a team that does their damage primarily on the ground and then by hitting D.J. Moore - most of that was still abundantly available yesterday if they could have executed it. Our D-line dominated the game - they would have no matter the person behind center yesterday. And, ohh yeah, they are also the ones directly responsible for the physical (clean) play that knocked Hill out. Best D-line performance I can recall as a UCF fan.
"shut down a run-based offense" Why is no one remembering this? It's being reported as if once their QB went down, their entire offense was over. NO, they were stopped to a small fraction of running yards per game.
37 rushes for 42 yards. Completely dominated
You almost never see any P5 school shutdown like that vs a G5 school
IN HISTORY!
This is going to be the best game in the AAC until we play USF, which is on a Friday so gameday won't be there, and gameday instead is going to another Clemson game. Sure it's the best game of the weekend but they just went to NYC for ****s sake so they don't care about best matchups all the time. Could be a good showing especially after the Hurricane and how the game had to be postponed and all that UCF had to do during that time. Sucks Disney doesn't use their pull and try to get them down here.
Liked this Durkin quote regarding loss.
“How someone getting hurt on offense can affect our defense, I don’t know,” Durkin said.
“How someone getting hurt on offense can affect our defense, I don’t know,” Durkin said.
And the 3rd stringer wasn't raw. He'd started a game last year and had 57 pass attempts in games, came in with as many career yards as Hill. We were frustrating Hill before he left the game, and we had lots of injuries during the game, too, that Maryland took immediate advantage of!
Well.., honestly that's a idiotic statement. The defense gets down when they see their offense getting annihilated. Also, they were starting to be on the field too long and lose the battle of field position.
A bad offense effects the defense. This isn't even debatable.
We lost our go-to workhorse back on his first carry. AKins and Pittman went out for a while. So did our best cover guy. In each case, Maryland immediately benefited -- our offense sputtered w/out Hamilton that first quarter and our defense gave up sizable yards with those key defenders went down. Last year, those type of player losses would have been critical. Not anymore. There are just too many guys to step in on a teams that's finally bought in.
Remember when we were worried about guys not getting enough touches?
That's why you have to have a stable of RBs (Hamilton injured) and WRs/TEs (Payton, Akins).
You're right relative to last year. And you must know I'm no admirer of Hamilton yet. He just hasn't shown it. But only Taj is a conventional back, and he lacks Hamilton's breakaway threat to an opponent. Anderson (who had to be used more) and Killins rely on speed or moves to get yards, rather than breaking tackles. Frost had to adapt his game plan to running by committee and relying on Milton to run more. He even had to get Smith his first 2 carries in his 3 year career! Akins is also irreplaceable. That was an absurd no-call on his double-covered would-be TD in the first half. Smith, too, because all the other guys only are wide open because defenses focus on Smith.
I think Gameday should go to more big cities like this more often. Getting diverse fans from all over the place was more interesting than just on one teams campus.
About time! Most of the major state football universities are in smaller towns far from where most people (especially alums) live and most of the spending power for advertisers. Gainesville, Athens, Tallahassee, College Station, Lincoln, Ames, East Lansing, Eugene, Fayetteville, Bloomington, Oxford (Miss), Logan, Lafayette, Manhattan (KS), Columbia (MO), Morgantown, Lexington, Charlottesville, Blacksburg, Ft. Collins, Champaign-Urbana, Corvallis, Iowa City, State College, Ann Arbor, Boulder, Spokane, etc. Only a handful of P5 state schools are in a large city: U of Washington, Ohio St., UCLA, Cal, U Minnesota, GaTech. Some say that flagship universities deliberately are located too far for 98% of the state's population to commute to so they can't live at home or keep the local part-time jobs (such as in the family business). Room and board and lower college town wages prevent most families from being able to afford anything but low-quality, weaker-student directional state college. For example, much of Florida's legislators have UF degrees. Networking beats knowledge most every time.
It doesn't have to go to big cities, going to NYC last weekend was dumb, it needs to go to more schools. Yes they want to be at the best games but going to the same campuses or following the same schools is just dumb. They were at a Clemson game the week prior and are going to see them again so twice in three weeks. Sure neither us or Memphis are ranked but it's going to be one of the best AAC games this season and they aren't coming for black Friday so they probably won't come to any, yet FCS schools get a gameday.
It should go to neutral locales so you don't feel awkward showing up in your schools colors on their campus. Going to random campuses where you don't know if people will show up would be dumb. 130 or so schools with what 14 weeks to pick a host. 110 schools will get left out. We are one of them unless we can run the table and get a late decision at tail end of year.
You don't downplay the significance of a G5 team that was 0-12 two seasons ago beating a P5 team 38-10.
The downside is now no P5 school will want to play us, so we can't get ranked. It's automatically built into the fix. Simpletons here keep saying that "Winning will solve everything" from attendance, recruiting, and invites to the P5. NO! Winning is an outcome, not the cause of success. Winning loses you your coach! Winning weakens your schedule! Winning is not a major factor in a school being invited!!! They got invited because (1) they didn't threaten anyone in the conference (that's why the ACC and SEC will never let us in), (2) they add a big, untapped market to the conference (e.g., Maryland, Rutgers, BC, and Syracuse; Utah and Colorado to Pac 12; Missouri and A&M to the SEC. That's why UCF is a good fit for the Big 12 and Big Ten.
If we keep winning, we'll get invited to one of those preseason kickoff classics, like Boise. Here's hoping that USF is 11-0 and UCF is 10-0 going into black Friday and the B12 makes a knee-jerk reaction to add both schools because they are looking at getting shut out of the Playoff again.
This makes no sense at all. So they should go to Cleveland Ohio for an Ohio State game instead of Columbus because there might not being any other visiting fans in Columbus? They should just choice all 14 weeks ahead of time so you know where they'll be before hand. Yes they want to be at the best matchups but as they showed with going to NYC they don't really care about that too much.
Nobody ducked Boise St, Utah or TCU when they were mid majors. No one ducked us after we won the Fiesta Bowl. We need to play P5 teams to get ranked, but if we beat one, they won't play us. ?????
just further proves what many of us has believed for years..the UCF job is very underrated and attractive job.
This couldn't be further from the truth. If you remember, many of the P5 conferences will now only allow a few select G5 teams to be on their schedule in order to boost their SOS. UCF was left off that list last year because of our 0-12 season. If I remember correctly, BYU, Cincy, Boise, Navy, and a few others made the list. Thus, P5's need more G5's like UCF to be able to fill their schedule, or else they have to find and pay more for lower tier P5's.
Indeed. We were dominating ... hence why their QB had to scramble a lot!
Also ... the reason why we weren't scoring in the 1st quarter was because we were dropping a lot of passing in the 1st quarter. We were executing, other than the dropped passes. Milton also had a few "imperfect" throws early on that added to the 1st quarter woes too.
Total shift in the Sagarins, which matches the ESPN and other "computer" rankings.
- https://www.usatoday.com/sports/ncaaf/sagarin/2017/conference/
We're as low as #31 (PREDICTOR) and as high as #50 (GOLDEN_MEAN), but we're clearly low to mid 30s median where points at least matter somewhat, given Maryland beat Texas, and FIU -- although they've played a crap schedule -- has won their two (2) other games.
We're not top 25. But we're not far out now. A solid Memphis win will push us into the top 25.
BTW, Marc Daniels -- mid Maryland TD drive (well before they scored) -- noted that we had a lot of 2nd team D in there, which explained a lot of the assignment and penalty issues. So considering that we're playing for a NY6 bid, I hate to say it, but "style points" matter.
I understand why much of the 2nd team D was in there when we were up 24-3. But I think Frost knows to try to limit that next time until later in the 4th quarter. I really had to say that, because I hate the 1st team being in there when we're up 3 TDs. But we might need to against everyone going forward.
If we have the opportunity. I fear Memphis will be hungry for an upset, and this will be a real fight to the end.
- https://www.usatoday.com/sports/ncaaf/sagarin/2017/conference/
We're as low as #31 (PREDICTOR) and as high as #50 (GOLDEN_MEAN), but we're clearly low to mid 30s median where points at least matter somewhat, given Maryland beat Texas, and FIU -- although they've played a crap schedule -- has won their two (2) other games.
We're not top 25. But we're not far out now. A solid Memphis win will push us into the top 25.
BTW, Marc Daniels -- mid Maryland TD drive (well before they scored) -- noted that we had a lot of 2nd team D in there, which explained a lot of the assignment and penalty issues. So considering that we're playing for a NY6 bid, I hate to say it, but "style points" matter.
I understand why much of the 2nd team D was in there when we were up 24-3. But I think Frost knows to try to limit that next time until later in the 4th quarter. I really had to say that, because I hate the 1st team being in there when we're up 3 TDs. But we might need to against everyone going forward.
If we have the opportunity. I fear Memphis will be hungry for an upset, and this will be a real fight to the end.
Then why was it that HALF the AAC had only ONE P5 school on their schedule this year and we had 2 (until GT was cancelled)? Better logic says that UCF was more likely to be scheduled for being weak because the P5 were now playing tougher OOC opponents and needed assured wins in the G5. Look what happened when Nebraska just lost to a MAC team -- all hell broke lose. Almost the same when Maryland at home got clobbered by UCF.
Sadly, those days are over. The system is so much more rigged that the P5 can ignore ALL G5 schools with impunity. Don't forget several years back when Cincy had a great season or back in 1998 when Tulane was undefeated. G5 teams just cannot schedule enough P5 opponents to get high enough ranked! Houston last year may have been the final chance (they had two fabulous OOC opponents) -- but they lost two in the AAC.
just a note of clarification: Texas was ranked when Maryland went to Austin and beat them. I like that fact, but also take it with a grain of salt because preseason rankings are ****ing stupid. Texas was overrated. Maryland is a good team, but not as good as many thought they were. BUT, we beat a good team, on the road on national TV without our #1 back. Regardless of all the talk about systems being rigged, P5 this and P6 that, G5 and BMW M5's, I was at the game, we looked good. Just keep winning.
You don't go to a city for any game. You go to get fans who normally won't travel 12 hours or more to show support for their team on national tv. They weren't in NYC for any game. But as they showed you there were roughly 30 P5 schools with bars near there. Countless more G5.
