STS Prediction Contest - Week 2 Recap

Welcome to the STS Prediction League Week 2 Recap! In an effort to provide you, dear reader, with the best recap possible, graphics and basic statistical analysis is now being provided in the recap of each match up.

Week 2 Matchups

Google Forms

Actual score: 30-24

My pick: 56-17 Clemson

Average Clemson Points Prediction (Mean): 52.16

Average Troy Points Prediction (Mean): 14.20

This game can’t be viewed as anything but a massive disappointment for the Tigers. There were drops, off-target passes, terrible blocking, a punt return TD that Ray Ray dropped of his own volition right before the end zone that was recovered by Troy... the list goes on. At the end of the day Clemson survived, but a game against Troy (no offense) should not be a game where Clemson has to keep its starters in and survive a 4th quarter comeback attempt. If it were not for the defense shutting down Troy for much of the game and forcing multiple turnovers, Clemson would have lost this game. Clemson is not playing like a top 10 team right now, much less a top 25 team. If the voters drop Clemson significantly next week, I won’t be able to blame them.

Okay, okay, on the bright side, at least we didn’t nearly lose to Nicholls (oh hi Georgia).

Lastly, I assumed the person (cough IhateUSuC cough) who picked Troy did so by mistake since their predicted score had Clemson scoring more points than Troy. I generously gave them credit for picking Clemson, but be careful!

Actual score: 45-24 Tennessee

My pick: 30-17 Tennessee

Average VT Points Prediction (Mean): 20.42

Average Tenn Points Prediction (Mean): 23.02

Not as many picked Tennessee as I would have thought. For the first part of the game, VT looked dominant and Tennessee was all out of sorts. However, Tennessee put themselves together and started clicking. That’s something I thought Clemson would do at some point on Saturday, but they never really got their offense going until they started to do more QB runs. One can only hope that we were trying to keep our offense vanilla. Having to use a gimmick play to beat Troy is not good.

This is a pretty disappointing result for VT and for the ACC. Tennessee certainly looked beatable, but the Hokies could not take advantage.

Actual score: 42-39 Pittsburgh

My pick: 24-20 Pittsburgh

Average Penn State Points Prediction (Mean): 19.73

Average Pittsburgh Points Prediction (Mean): 24.06

Uh, you guys, wasn’t this supposed to be a defense-first affair? Pittsburgh pulls out the win by a small margin, exactly as I predicted... just with nearly twice as many points scored by both sides. Oops. I didn’t catch any of this game as I was flinging obscenities at the Clemson-Troy game (what a way to waste 4 hours on a Saturday) but I had noticed Pittsburgh up big at the beginning, so they held off a Penn State comeback attempt.

Actual score: 27-14 Mississippi State

My pick: 35-24 Mississippi State

Average South Carolina Points Prediction (Mean): 16.41

Average Mississippi Prediction (Mean): 21.47

I’m not surprised by the result. I foolishly picked way too many points, though, for these two teams. After SC’s putrid showing against Vanderbilt, why would I think they could score 20+ points against Cowbell State?

The real question is, why did 20% of you think SC was going to win? C’mon people.

Actual score: 20-19 Utah

My pick: 28-20 BYU

Average BYU Points Prediction (Mean): 26.86

Average Utah Points Prediction (Mean): 27.89

Gosh, I nailed the Utah points prediction, but unfortunately BYU did not win. 2-point conversion to win the game? I’m actually a fan of doing more 2-point conversions. Give me a 2-pointer for the win. Before our (lack of) offensive showing the last two weeks, coming into the season I would have said Clemson should consider going for 2 more often, especially given Huegel’s odd struggle with extra points.

Interestingly enough, the margin between the scores predicted for both teams above was just about 1 point and Utah ended up winning the game by 1 point. Over ²⁄₃ of people thought that Utah would win.

Standings

Here are the overall top scorers after the first two weeks:

And here are the top scorers for this week:

You can access the full standings and results here.

The results are sorted alphabetically to make it easier for you to find yourself. The tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet will navigate among the overall results, week 2 results, and week 1 results.

Again, there’s still plenty of time to join. A few good weeks will get you right in the mix!

As always, if you notice any scoring errors or have any other comments or questions, please feel free to let me know in the comments.