Last week, we asked who would blow out whom in the College Football Playoff semifinals.
I am a fool.
After years of almost-always terrible semifinals, we got two great ones, the first through ugly, hilarious chaos and the second through what were probably the best two teams in the country taking one another to the ropes. TCU’s defense made stop after stop in the short yardage until they couldn’t anymore, but they’d held the line long enough. Stetson Bennett and Georgia did just barely enough themselves, the Bulldog defense holding Ohio State just enough that the final field goal attempt was two yards longer than Noah Ruggles’s season long (given Ruggles was perfect on field goals between 40 and 49 yards these last two years, one wonders if his approach changed at 50). TCU/Michigan was among the best playoff games in this format. Ohio State/Georgia was among the greatest games of all time.
Looking to Monday, it’s hard now to write off TCU, even though we probably still should. The Horned Frogs won not only with their high-octane, Mike Leach-disciple offense, but with a defensive tenacity which shockingly stuffed Michigan in the trenches repeatedly early in the game. That tenacity ran out of gas, and if you want to design a team that can hang with Georgia, it isn’t one who allowed 528 yards and 45 points to Michigan despite holding them to a 20% conversion rate on third and fourth down. The yardage isn’t the biggest problem—Ohio State let Michigan put up 530 in that department, and Ohio State just hung with the Dawgs—so much as the conversions. That kind of success shouldn’t be sustainable against an offensive line like Georgia’s. But then again, it shouldn’t have been sustainable against an offensive line like Michigan’s.
There will be time to go through the hierarchy of college football in the wake of these games. Ohio State’s still a national factor, Michigan’s further away than they hoped, there are questions about Georgia…basically, if you can get Alabama at a good price for next year’s national championship, you should take it. But to touch on this for a minute more:
TCU is turning college football on its head. Not in that they’re suddenly a power themselves—I’ll be surprised if they’re favored to win next year’s Big 12—but in that they showed it’s not only a handful of programs who can make the National Championship Game. TCU is the worst team to play for a national title in years, and that is a ringing testimony to what Sonny Dykes’s team has done. My understanding of the greater college football apparatus, as recently as this time on Saturday, was that it was a long, difficult campaign to the top, one requiring massive inflows of talent and then exact and sustained execution. TCU has shown that you might be able to simply catch lightning in a bottle. “Simply,” because in college football, that might be easier.
What to Make of UConn’s Loss
At the top, the college basketball weekend went like this:
- UConn lost at Xavier.
- UCLA escaped Wazzu in Pullman, then beat up Washington in Seattle.
- Kansas held off Oklahoma State at home in Lawrence.
There was nothing else all that noteworthy. Houston had an oddly hard time stopping UCF, who made some bones at the free thrown line, and Gonzaga hung 111 on Pepperdine (but allowed 88), and Baylor looks bad and Ohio State looks good but we’ll at least get to the Baylor side in a minute (Ohio State is about to crack the consciousness, lining up to be favored in Columbus against Purdue on Thursday night, so maybe they’ll be our lead that morning). Really, UCLA and Kansas continued to prove themselves and UConn hit a roadblock, while no one else did anything else particularly interesting. The question from the weekend is the UConn question, and the UConn question alone.
UConn’s most noteworthy results now are that they’ve beaten Alabama on a neutral floor in Portland while playing games on consecutive days (not the most representative setting for the whole of a season), and that they really pounded Florida in Gainesville. Alabama’s good (not great), but Florida’s a bubble team. The takeaway? UConn remains largely untested, and UConn should remain that way through Big East play. This Big East, in basketball, is similar to this year’s Big 12 in football: It’s a good league, but it isn’t all over the top ten. The game at Xavier might, in hindsight, be UConn’s toughest of the entire season on paper.
This isn’t good or bad for UConn, this absence of top line games. It just makes it harder to read them. Was Saturday’s loss a sign of vulnerability? Or did UConn just have a sloppy time in a road conference game against a solid (not on the Alabama level) team? It’s probably the latter. It was probably just one game. But it does get at the thing we’ll be asking of UConn all season, which is what they’ll do against another national player, should they do enough to encounter one.
Iowa State Answered the Bell
And now Baylor’s in trouble.
We’ll start with the Baylor piece: The Bears disintegrated defensively, and not for the first time. Consistently, during these last three years of Baylor contending nationally (and winning that title), the defense has been good enough. It hasn’t always been great, but it’s always, always, always been good. Now? It’s fine. It isn’t bad, really, and it’s still ferocious attacking the ball. But the open looks are there. They’re there a lot, in fact. They were all over the place on Saturday.
We categorize teams here, with our contenders (default contenders, right now) at the top and then teams with questions below them and then the good-not-great teams below those who merely have questions. We need to drop Baylor from that final category. This was too bad of a game, even on the road. The categories now, then? UCLA, Kansas, and UConn are the contenders. Houston, Tennessee, Purdue, Texas, Arizona, and Gonzaga all have questions. Alabama, Arkansas, Virginia, Ohio State, Kentucky, and Duke are good, but they’re unlikely to become great. That’s where we’re at.
On the Cyclones side, it’s a great win not because it’ll pop on a team sheet but because it would have been a frustrating loss. If you’re going to hang near .500 in the Big 12, you need to win your home games, especially against teams who are not Kansas. With the first three conference home games coming against Baylor, Texas Tech, and Texas, the possibility of an 0-7 conference start looked all too real when the guys were trailing in the first half. Then, they started the run, and the framework is changed: They’ll be going to Norman and Fort Worth this week on the offensive, looking to stake some territory in the league’s pack.
One last thought: I wonder if a guy like Gabe Kalscheur, who’s had some trouble with his shot, benefits from things like getting his nose bloodied like it was in the first half. I wonder if the adrenaline rush gets him out of his head enough, or something like that. Does anyone have a bloody nose database I can borrow?
The Packers Are In Position
With the Commanders falling to the Browns before the Packers trounced the Vikings yesterday, Green Bay now controls its playoff fate, and given they’re a 4.5-point favorite at the moment against the Lions next weekend, the likelier thing is that they do make the playoff field. It will be far from easy—the Lions are not a bad team, and have beaten Green Bay before—but it’s on the table. It’s there for the taking.
A thing I’m curious about with the win is how good this defense really is. It’s been a stark turnaround these last few weeks after a largely disappointing year on that side of the ball, stark enough to force the question of whether the Packers shut down the Dolphins and Vikings or if the Packers caught some good draws in getting to play the Dolphins and the Vikings. Tua Tagovailoa’s passes, to this uneducated observer, looked like balloons, floating there for the taking (maybe this is how he throws, maybe this was the concussion). Kirk Cousins, of course, had a very bad day yesterday, and he isn’t stupendous to begin with. The Lions offense is a solid one. On paper, it should be more of a challenge to stop. It’s supposed to be cold but otherwise pleasant in Wisconsin on Sunday. No help from precipitation is on its way.
**
Viewing schedule, second screen rotation in italics:
Bowl Games
- 12:00 PM EST: ReliaQuest Bowl – Mississippi State vs. Illinois (ESPN2)
- 1:00 PM EST: Cotton Bowl – Tulane vs. USC (ESPN)
- 1:00 PM EST: Citrus Bowl – LSU vs. Purdue (ABC)
- 5:00 PM EST: Rose Bowl – Penn State vs. Utah (ESPN)
College Basketball (sampler platter)
- 7:00 PM EST: Rutgers @ Purdue (BTN)
- 7:00 PM EST: West Virginia @ Oklahoma State (ESPNU)
NFL
- 8:30 PM EST: Buffalo @ Cincinnati (ABC)
NBA (best game, plus the Bulls)
- 7:00 PM EST: Bulls @ Cleveland (League Pass)
- 7:00 PM EST: New Orleans @ Philadelphia (League Pass)
NHL (best game)
- 2:00 PM EST: Winter Classic – Pittsburgh @ Boston (TNT)
Premier League
- 12:30 PM EST: Liverpool @ Brentford (USA)
EFL Championship (best game)
- 10:00 AM EST: Watford @ Norwich (ESPN+)
