[Husker] Close game?

[Steve Reichenbach]

The WKU vs Kentucky game didn't help the Huskers either.  I heard
speculation that WKU would be better this year, but Kentucky led
42-14 at the half and won 63-28.  And, Kentucky hasn't shown much,
winning 23-16 against Louisville (which beat Eastern Kentucky 23-13).
As a point of comparison, Missouri St beat Eastern Kentucky by 31-9,
so squeeking out a win against Louisville (even on the road) doesn't
make Kentucky look so good.

Here are some the WKU - Kentucky stats compared to WKU - NU.
            WKU    UK   WKU    NU
1st Downs    14    22    14    23
Total Yards 284   482   299   536
By this comparison, NU isn't much better than a pretty weak Kentucky
team.

Idaho did wallop North Dakota 45-0, but North Dakota lost to N Illinois
23-17, which lost to Iowa State 27-10, which lost to Iowa 35-7, which
might lead one to conclude that North Dakota is so far down the totem
pole (so to speak) that Idaho's big win doesn't mean much.

At this point, all one can say is that NU didn't struggle to beat
two very weak teams at home.  You can't blame the computers for
indicating that NU hasn't shown much yet.

I've been thinking that NU could do the same to better teams as it did
with those weaker teams, but we'll see.


> Somewhat surprising to me as well. Originally I might have attributed
> it to the scores being a bit closer than they should have been the
> last two weeks...but Washington hasn't been terribly impressive either.
> (Losing to BYU and trailing Syracuse 10-0 before finally getting things
> straightend out.) Sagarin is especially unimpressed with Nebraska; that
> computer has the Huskers ranked in the 30's.
> 
> > I wasn't thinking of this as a close game, even on the road, and was
> > very surprised to see the line at 3 points.  So, I looked at a couple
> > of the best computer ratings (Sagarin and Massey) and see that the
> > matchup might even be closer (although it should be said that at this
> > point in the season the computer ratings are based on little data and
> > are highly volitile).  So, I'm surprised that NU isn't a bigger favorite.