Saturday, October 15, 2011

Texas' busy non conference schedule

Yesterday Texas AD Deloss Dodds said the Horns non-conference schedule was full until 2018. As a courtesy to my reader, here's what the Horns have on the slate for the coming years:

2012 - Wyoming, New Mexico (backup plan to join the Mountain West?), at Mississippi.
2013 - New Mexico State, at BYU, Mississippi
2014 - North Texas, BYU, at Arkansas
2015 - at Notre Dame, Rice, Cal
2016 - Notre Dame, UTEP, at Cal
2017 - Maryland, UCF, at USC
2018 - Maryland, open, USC

Honestly, I was surprised at this slate of future contest. UT has been scheduling patsies of the SunBelt and Conf USA for several years. It look like they stepped it up a bit.

What will be interesting will be if the Big 12 loses Missouri and doesn't replace. Or if they expand to 12, and go back to divisional play. Either scenario would free up a slot on the schedule. UT seems to now be following the OU philosophy of a premier national exposure non-conference matchup, a cupcake, and a middle of the road independent or automatic qualifier. Not a lot of teams from AQ conferences sign up for two non-conference games of that magnitude.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

The Newfound Horns Rushing Attack

Much ado this week about Texas being better because they have a run game now. Well, it's better than last year, but let's take a quick look:

In four games, Texas has averaged 4.55 yards per attempt. Someone will tell you they have the 25 best rushing attack in the country. That's true, if you count yards per game. However, what's really going on is the Horns are rushing more. They have the 13th most rushing attempts. The average per carry only ranks 37th.

Finally, here are the rankings of the four Horns foes in terms of yards per carry allowed:
Rice 117, BYU 92, UCLA 110, Iowa State 51. The most telling part of this: in only one of the four games (UCLA) was the Longhorn yards per carry greater than what the team has allowed in their other contests.

Rice gave up 4.77 yards per carry, and gives up 6.1 yards to everyone else.
BYU gave up 3.86 ypc against Texas, and 4.86 to everyone else
UCLA: 5.68 vs 5.01
Iowa State: 3.62 to the Horns, 3.73 to others.

Overall, the 4.55 yards per carry for the Horns compares unfavorably with the 4.95 yards per carry that the other opponents of the Horns foes have gained. So, Malcolm Brown is better than the Greg Davis coached RB by committee, let's not confuse them with Georgia Tech or Wisconsin.