What a Weekend! (Week 5)

The BCS Busters are down to two as Houston lost to UTEP, so only Boise St and TCU have a shot at being a BCS Buster this year. Boise’s toughest foe appears to be Tulsa who they have to play on the road and TCU has to play BYU on the road.

Let’s take a look at this week’s top performances:

USC’s demolition of California on the road got them the top grade for this week at 103.4 per my computer. USC is a prime contender for the National Title and should they end up with just one loss, would probably get my vote if they continue to play this impressively. They have been in the Top 25 Performances of the Week every week this year.

Nevada’s waxing of UNLV – The Pack did catch UNLV without their starting QB (Omar Clayton) but Mike Clausen played well. The Pack’s 559 yards rushing (10.2) is very impressive.

Miami, Fla’s home upset of Oklahoma was also impressive and would have ranked higher but they only outgained the Sooners by 1 yard.

LSU played, by far, their most impressive game of the year, outgaining Georgia by 94 yards on the road and could have been up by much more at the half. They are now a legitimate Top 4 team this year and their showdown with Florida looms.

Penn St piled up 338 yards rushing and 175 passing vs Illinois on the road. Remember, the Illini did get a garbage TD in that game.

Mississippi was in control throughout vs Vanderbilt giving up a late score and had a 157 yard edge.

Ohio St fumbled at their own 40 and Indiana got a TD on the last play of the game to make the final appear closer than the game was. The Bucks also missed 2 FG’s and were intercepted inside the 10.

Pittsburgh’s 2H vs Louisville was impressive enough to get them into the Top 25 spot for the week at #12.

Auburn’s win on the road vs Tennessee was impressive as they took on an excellent D and had 224 yards rushing and 235 passing.

Virginia went into North Carolina and outgained them by 80 yards. Who would have thought a few weeks back that Virginia would have a Top 20 performance in an Individual Game grade?

This past week on Saturday I put up my computer’s average rankings for the year and these should become much more powerful as we now have much more data to work with. Each week I will also list my combined set of power ratings’ Top 25. This past week I put them up on Saturday, but I may put them up as early as Friday this week.

The conference races are heating up. On Tuesday’s blog you not only get the projected standings for the non-conference games, but those games dwindling off. Also make sure that you check out the projected standings for the conference races. I like looking at this chart because it shows you upcoming games. Sometimes teams get off to 2-0 starts versus light foes and have all the tough games remaining and actually finish in the lower part of the standings. Conversely some teams get off to slow starts in the standings and have lighter games left on the schedule. A prime example of that might just be Illinois who just faced the top 2 teams in the Big 10 (Penn St and Ohio St) and lost them both and is clearly in the bottom of the Big Ten standings but has the easier part of their schedule coming up so still might surprise. Look out for that on Tuesday by noon!

Here are my computer’s Top 25 individual game grades for this past week and on Monday, we’ll have the first half of my News and Notes. I’ve gone through about 25 play-by-plays right now and will have gone through every play-by-play by Monday afternoon. I give you all of the interesting behind the scenes looks at what happened in the games, not just the final score and in some cases, I point out misleading yards in games this weekend.