Worst 4-0 team in America on Oct. 1? RT @BCSisBS: 2 really crappy teams coming up for USC. They go to Minnesota and then to Washington State
Worst 4-0 team in America on Oct. 1? RT @BCSisBS: 2 really crappy teams coming up for USC. They go to Minnesota and then to Washington State
All the better for the Huskies coming off a bye week. An undeservedly confident USC facing a hungry UW team 🙂
Incidentally my early prediction is the Pac-10 will fall out into three groups:
Stanford
Oregon
Oregon State
Cal
Washington
Arizona
USC
ASU
UCLA
WSU
I have the bottom three in order, the top three in order although not a strong order. The middle is tougher. Right now I’d pick Cal fourth, Arizona fifth, UW sixth, USC seventh, although honestly those are worth the pixels your reading them on. I have no read on Arizona because the two teams they have beaten are well, crap. The Huskies looked shaky against BYU and at the first half of the first quarter of Syracuse, but looked really good after that. USC continues to look really really shaky. Cal looked great but like Arizona, not exactly stiff competition so far.
While Oregon State looked respectable down in Arlington last week, I don’t have nearly as much faith in them as you do. Also, you give way too much credit to Washington; if they’re not at the bottom just above WSU and fUCLA, they are certainly not above Arizona and USC.
I think Arizona belongs in that top group over Oregon State (you’re not giving nearly enough credit for dominating Toledo on both sides of the ball on the road), but we’ll find that out soon enough next week when they play Iowa. Also, I have nothing concrete to base this on, but I think ASU gives Wisconsin a good game this week and belongs in the middle group.
As for USC, there’s a lot of gnashing and wailing of teeth, but I’m not sure what justifies it. The Hawaii game had the Trojans playing a very tough offense with a very green secondary that had done no live tackling in fall camp, and the results showed. The improvement in tackling and coverage against UVA was significant. If the secondary and tackling improves at the same rate over the next two weeks against Minnesota and Washington State, we’ll be fine.
As for last night’s game, don’t get me wrong, USC did not play well overall, but there’s no way that UVA team is a last-place ACC team. You could tell right away that Mike London is a great coach (FCS champion at Richmond in 2008), and he had his guys ready to play. The other thing that struck me was, UVA is not particularly fast, but they have some BIG dudes — their TE and RB Payne were beasts, and I was impressed also by their big WR. Their defense played great assignment football and limited the USC running game from getting to the second level.
As for USC, Matt Barkley had an awful second half, overthrowing receivers multiple times, and some of his best plays in the first half were negated by dumb penalties. While the offense cleaned up its act on penalties in the second half, the overall lack of discipline is disconcerting. Finally, the DL was supposed to be monstrous this year, and it clearly isn’t. Ed Orgeron and Monte Kiffin have their work cut out for them.
Overall, this USC team is still jelling and needs to improve on discipline. The secondary is improving at the rate expected, and the offense is phenomenal when not shooting itself in the foot. As long as we see gradual improvement in the secondary and DL over the next couple of weeks, alongside a reduction in penalties, I see no reason to be concerned about our prospects against the tougher Pac-10 teams we’ll face down the stretch.
If you’d asked me last week the Huskies would have been my 7th place pick but they played solid on Saturday after a rocky start. USC meanwhile seems to still be really shaky. So, based on that I’m giving the nod to UW for now, but I’m not gong to say I’d put money down on my middle of the pack picks. You might be right that Arizona is better, but it felt odd putting both Cal AND Arizona on top when neither has played serious competition so I split the difference.
Rethinking it I would probably revise my list and pull Oregon State and Arizona State into the middle group of not so confident picks. Reallythe top two and bottom two are the only strong bets I see right now.
Just noticed that the Pac-10 went 8-0 in non-conference games last week (including Stanford’s win over 1-AA UCLA)!
I’ll take the worst 4-0 team in the country over 0-4 UCLA or whatever ND is at that time. USC has awesome talent on offense. I don’t know about on Defense. The team is very young, and I know they will improve significantly as the season goes on and onto next season. No wonder Kif took the sanctions immediately, this team may not amount to much or they may go undefeated. The offense didn’t look good Saturday, the Defense didn’t look good in Week 1, but it will all come together at some point. Don’t forget that USC has had 300 yards in penalties over 2 games, and that affects the team greatly.
This makes a lot more sense.
Amusing to look at some of the computer rankings after the first two games. Sagarin’s Elo-Chess version (the one that the BCS uses) has USC #4. But Colley has USC as #1!!!!