First South Carolina observation

My standing caveat about game predictions is the effect of turnovers.  Usually that’s just a routine genuflection on my part, but it might be worth keeping an eye on Saturday.

South Carolina is +8 in turnover margin.  That’s second-best in the conference.  (In conference games only, the ‘Cocks are first in that category.)  Further, Jake Bentley hasn’t thrown an interception in his past four games, a streak up to 136 pass attempts.

The Dawgs have been a little fortunate this season in that they’ve comfortably survived the two games in which they generated negative turnover margins.  Bill Connelly’s analysis shows them minus-1.09 points per game in turnover luck, which seems a little surprising for an 8-0 team.  (Alabama’s, for instance, is +2.31 ppg.  South Carolina’s, by the way, is almost as good at +1.99 ppg.)

In short, this week, take my caveat seriously.

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Hold the line

To give you an idea of how unbalanced the top of the conference is from the rest of the SEC, Vegas is having a problem setting lines in games involving Alabama and Georgia.  No, really.

How are the odds makers handling Georgia and Alabama in that they are blowing out a lot of people?

We are seeing some really historic lines in the SEC. Alabama is being favored by 30 points or more over several teams in the SEC. There just haven’t been many of those in history and now Georgia is kind of creeping up there. It’s difficult for (odds makers). How do they gauge how big a gap has been created between these top SEC teams, Alabama and Georgia, and then the rest of the league, which really has kind of fallen off? This is the biggest point spread on a Georgia-South Carolina game going back to at least 1997 and it’s not even really close. The next-closest one was 18.5 in 2005. This is not just a Georgia-South Carolina thing, this is an SEC thing where these top teams have really separated themselves.

How do the smart gamblers figure out when Alabama and Georgia become overvalued?

You are looking at your power rankings, and your power rankings are based specifically on the talent that these kids have. Some people focus on coaching. Some people will add on little things about recruiting in terms of depth. You are strictly looking at your power rankings now and your power rankings are saying Georgia is 24 points better. Now Georgia has beaten teams by plus-30 so it’s a tough spot for them. The talent and the metrics are saying 24 but you look at these scores with Georgia and you’re seeing 30-point victories. It is a tough thing, and you will often see the sharp guys with these big inflated lines, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some late money on South Carolina as these guys sit there and wait and wait and wait and see how much this line gets driven up and then take the other side. They are just looking at their metrics.

If they’ve been doing that lately with Georgia, their metrics are screwing them out of some major bucks.

When the going gets tough, Champions of Life get going.

This is not a good look for Booch.

Communications received by The Read Optional show that Tennessee’s staff knowingly played a player with a concussion. Brett Kendrick, the team’s starting right tackle, played at least two quarters of Saturday’s loss against Kentucky with a concussion, per a source with knowledge of the situation.

“He is resting in a dark room. He doesn’t remember anything about the second half of the game”. A text received by The Read Optional reads. “They left him in until the last 22 seconds and only pulled him out because he finally threw up on the sideline.”

Kendrick (#63) was visibly wobbling throughout the second and third quarters. He missed assignments and often appeared unaware that the ball was even snapped.

If that’s accurate, Jones has gone from losing a job to losing a job for cause.  Jimmy Sexton’s got his work cut out for him.

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UPDATE:  AD’s response is here.

Advanced stats can be Dawg porn, too.

In case you’re wondering, the Dawgs notched their fourth showing of the season of 90% or better in Bill Connelly’s percentile performance.

Also, dig these tidbits from Brian Fremeau:

Defensive available yards leaders (percentage of yards allowed on non-garbage drives, measured from starting field position to end zone):
.242 Georgia
.259 Alabama
.267 Clemson
.277 Michigan
.280 Virginia Tech

Defensive efficiency data for all 130 teams: https://t.co/eHCvWprF7q

— Brian Fremeau (@bcfremeau) November 1, 2017

Single game opp-adjusted overall, offense, and defense game ratings for all 130 teams: https://t.co/UhW9ELXJn5

Most 90th-percentile GFEI games recorded to date:
6 – Clemson, Ohio St
5 – Georgia
4 – Mississippi St, Notre Dame, Penn St, Oklahoma, Oklahoma St, Washington

— Brian Fremeau (@bcfremeau) November 1, 2017

Points per non-garbage offensive drive leaders:
3.78 Ohio St
3.71 Oklahoma
3.66 UCF
3.53 Alabama
3.50 Oklahoma St

Points per opponent offensive drive:
0.57 Alabama
0.67 Georgia
0.84 Clemson
0.90 Washington
0.91 Auburn

Data for all 130 teams: https://t.co/ET6ExG4bOg

— Brian Fremeau (@bcfremeau) November 1, 2017

Hubba hubba.

BREAKING: South Carolina’s not-so-secret game plan for beating Georgia

Sure, everybody’s talked about stopping the run to win against Georgia, but it’s Will Muschamp who’s got the secret victory sauce.

From the looks of Javon Kinlaw’s Twitter account, South Carolina’s defensive game plan for Saturday’s showdown with No. 2 Georgia already has been completely installed.

“Brush your teeth physical this week,” the Gamecocks sophomore defensive tackle posted on his social media account Tuesday.

Kinlaw put the statement in quotes, indicating he had heard it from someone this week. South Carolina coach Will Muschamp wouldn’t confess to being that someone, but it sounds like the kind of thing Muschamp would say, especially with his team on the verge of playing one of the country’s most bruising running games.

“You’ve got to have a physical mindset in this ballgame,” Muschamp said. “You’ve got to understand that part of it. Everything you do, you be physical. So I appreciate him listening well.”

Evidently the rest of the SEC, as well as Notre Dame, has failed to pick on that.  It’s not enough to object to Georgia running the ball.  You’ve got to strenuously object.

A stat from Georgia’s last game:

4 Rushing TDs were scored by Georgia in its 42-7 victory over Florida on Saturday — the same number of rushing TDs that the Gators had given up in their first six games of the season. On Saturday, Sony Michel scored on runs of 74 and 45 yards, Elijah Holyfield scored on a 39-yard run and Nick Chubb scored on a 6-yard run for Georgia. The Bulldogs’ 292 rushing yards more than doubled the 143.3 per game that Florida averaged yielding in its first six games.

South Carolina’s already given up eight rushing touchdowns, so they probably won’t match the Gators’ futility in that department.  The ‘Cocks do rank higher than UF in rushing defense going into the game; then again, playing Georgia can wreck a defense’s stats.

“In our room, it’s not letting us down, it’s letting them down.”

If you’d have told me before the season began that Georgia’s starting quarterback would go 4-7 for 101 yards and throw an interception in the Florida game, it wouldn’t have given me a lot of hope for the outcome.  As it turned out, of course, it was merely the byproduct of a dominant running attack and defense that allowed the Dawgs to control the game without any need to put a lot on Jake Fromm’s shoulder, other than his general management skills (which have been superb so far for a true freshman).

That, in turn, is due in large part to the improvement on the offensive line.  Georgia hasn’t given up a lot of sacks, but a lot of that can be attributed to its reliance on the running game.  What is more relevant is the drop in tackles for loss allowed from last season’s national ranking of 90th to this season’s 32nd.  That has fueled a similar rise in yards per carry from 2016’s 54th to 2017’s 8th.

Sam Pittman’s done a whale of a job, obviously, but if you want to dig a little deeper into what’s gone on, Seth Emerson has the details here.

Today, in doing it for the kids

Just your regular reminder that the NCAA totally sucks.  Totally.

That this Braxton Beverly fiasco played out against the backdrop of the NCAA’s reluctance to involve itself in North Carolina’s academic fraud debacle adds a special touch, though, I have to admit.