Sports blog information from USA TODAY.
This upcoming season will be the Big 12’s last 10-team conference as we knew it.
Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ve heard by now that the Big 12 conference is slated to welcome Cincinnati, Houston, BYU and UCF in the coming years. Continue reading “Report: Big 12 conference set to welcome four new teams for the 2023-24 academic year”
With the tournament right around the corner, potential matchups are becoming clearer.
Alabama men’s basketball has had a bit of a rocky season. Despite defeating three of last season’s Final Four teams, the Crimson Tide struggle with playing down to opponents.
Once a top-10 ranked team, Alabama fell outside of the top 25 and just recently re-entered the poll at the No. 25 spot.
With only a few games remaining in the regular season, Nate Oats’ team is battling for a better position in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
In Sports Illustrated’s most recent bracket projections, Alabama is a No. 5 seed in the Midwest, and would face-off against a No. 12 seed between either Rutgers or BYU.
Alabama will travel to Kentucky to take on the Wildcats tomorrow afternoon.
Roll Tide Wire will continue to follow the Crimson Tide Men’s basketball team.
Contact/Follow us @RollTideWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Alabama news, notes and opinion. You can also follow AJ Spurr on Twitter @SpurrFM.
Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today!
Who is the most surprising to you?
The ESPN SP+ Rankings have grown in interest over the last few years as advanced analytics become more a part of college football not just for coaching staffs, but for fans as well.
If you’re unaware of what SP+ is, our colleagues at Buckeyes Wire gave this explanation earlier this week.
“A predictive formula Bill Connelly uses and includes returning production, recruiting, recent history and other data that — according to ESPN — are built as a “tempo and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football … These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information that we have been able to gather to date.”
So based off of that information, where does Notre Dame rank nationally and of significant interest, where do Notre Dame’s 2022 opponents rank in the first edition of the SP+ Rankings (subscription required) for this fall?
Watch BYU head basketball coach Mark Pope reveal how terrified he was of the ducks in Portland. Not Oregon’s basketball team, mind you, but the actual ducks.
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The Oregon Ducks’ third game of the men’s basketball season was an ugly 81-49 beatdown at the hands of the BYU Cougars in Portland, one of many poor performances that are now thoroughly in the rearview mirror for Dana Altman’s squad.
For BYU however, it was a huge win that continues to pay dividends in their NET and KenPom ratings, two significant keys for them to secure an at-large bid in the NCAA Tournament assuming they do not defeat Gonzaga.
BYU coach Mark Pope is aware of the game’s significance, heaping praise on Altman’s team for their recent performance as they sit on a tidy eight-game winning streak.
“This Oregon game, that should be like a quad zero,” Pope told assembled media on Wednesday. “They’re so good. They said it was a neutral but I mean it was in Portland. I don’t know how much less neutral you can get, I mean you walk around Portland and there’s Ducks everywhere”.
At this point, it is pretty clear Pope is talking about Ducks as in University of Oregon fans and alumni.
But then, well, things got a little strange:
Are ducks scary? 🦆 😱 #BYU’s @CoachMarkPope thinks so. 😂 #BYUHoops #GoCougs pic.twitter.com/fNpc2UT7KM
— KSL Sports (@kslsports) January 26, 2022
Pope’s team sure didn’t have much trouble with the Ducks back in November, at least not the ones on the court, but it sounds like he’ll look to schedule their next matchup somewhere other than Portland – as the pervasive fear of rabid wild ducks clearly still haunts him to this day.
Pope didn’t say where (or why) he apparently saw multiple wild ducks while in the city of Portland, but they are not animals he has seen much of throughout his lengthy career in the game of basketball – which began as a player at the University of Washington.
They must have a “no ducks allowed” policy up in Seattle. And honestly, who can blame them?
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Who was the better BYU quarterback: the Jets’ Zach Wilson or the Saints’ Taysom Hill?
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The Jets’ Week 14 matchup with the Saints features two BYU quarterbacks in Zach Wilson and Taysom Hill.
This will be the first time since 1997 that two quarterbacks from BYU faced one another, according to ESPN’s Rich Cimini. That year, Steve Young and the 49ers faced Ty Detmer and the Eagles.
Despite their alma mater, Wilson and Hill are very different quarterbacks. Wilson is more of a prototypical pocket passer, while Hill is a run-first bruiser.
With both BYU products set to square off Sunday, let’s take a look at how their college careers compared.
What will the next top 6 look like?
Rivalry weekend came and went in the 2021 college football season and it was an absolute doozie. Michigan getting by Ohio State after a decade-straight of losing to their rival was epic to watch while Alabama’s comeback at Auburn was borderline insane, and Oklahoma-Oklahoma State for Bedlam was terrific as well.
So what do we take away from the weekend and what will the new College Football Playoff ratings look like on Tuesday night?
Here is our best guess here at Fighting Irish Wire.
First up: 25-21…
After Oregon was blasted at Utah, how will the latest CFP rankings look this week?
The 12th week of college football was a week of extremes. Two top 10 teams fell but neither were favored and one lost to a higher ranked team, so upsets isn’t the right word but a shakeup is certainly coming to the College Football Playoff rankings when they’re released Tuesday night.
After Ohio State blew out Michigan State, Utah routed Oregon, and a surprisingly exciting game between No. 2 Alabama and No. 24 Arkansas, how will the new CFP rankings look?
Here is our best guess as to what the fourth set of rankings will look like:
No. 12 Oregon faces BYU on ESPN for the Phil Knight Invitational at Moda Center in Portland. Here’s how to watch all of the action.
The men’s basketball season is well underway and the No. 12 Oregon Ducks begin one of the tougher parts of their schedule with the Phil Knight Invitational in Portland’s Mods Center.
The opponent? BYU! Come on down! The Cougars are 2-0 with their most recent victory being an impressive 66-60 win over San Diego State. This will be BYU’s first road/neutral site game.
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Oregon is 2-0 with a couple of easy wins over Texas Southern and SMU. This will be the Ducks first game away from Matthew Knight Arena. It’ll also be the first of 10 games that will be one of the ESPN channels. Hopefully they use better camera equipment for basketball than they do for football.
TV: ESPN (Comcast 35 SD or 735 HD) (DirecTV 206) (Dish Network 140/144/145)
Play-By-Play: Roxy Bernstein
Analyst: Sean Farnham
RADIO: Oregon Sports Network, KUJZ-FM 95.3 (Eugene) KFXX-AM 1080 (Portland) Sirius: 133 XM: 197
Play-By-Play: Joey McMurry
Analyst: Jerry Allen
VISITING RADIO: BYU Sports Network
Play-by-Play: Greg Wrubell
Analyst: Mark Durrant
LIVE STREAM: fuboTV (try it free)
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The Week 7 outcomes could alter the top of the Big 12 standings in a major way.
The Big 12 title is very much up for grabs, with multiple teams still in contention.
The conference as a whole has had a pretty solid showing this year outside of Kansas, and there are multiple matchups this week that will directly impact certain team’s chances of making it to the conference championship.
Although the Big 12 may have had better weeks game wise, there are a ton of storylines entering Week 7. Oklahoma may or may not have a new starting quarterback after benching Spencer Rattler against Texas during the Red River Showdown. Student media from the school spotted that Caleb Williams taking more reps with the first team than Rattler was.
Baylor has a chance to dive back into the top-25 if they are able to pull off the upset against a very good BYU team, while Texas and Oklahoma State square off in what could be the most important game on Texas’ schedule.
Last week brought my season record for predictions to 21-11 and I’m hoping to bounce back this week. Here is how I believe each Big 12 game will shake out this week:
The Irish are steady in the same spot as last week but plenty of movement around them
What a night that was, with Irish quarterback Jack Coan going from the goat to the hero in a matter of a few quarters and Notre Dame retained their ranking from last week in the updated USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches Poll.
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It wasn’t easy for the Irish last night, they had to battle all 40-minutes but it was worth it. Kicker Jonathan Doerer was clutch once again, nailing the game-winning field goal with under a minute remaining in the contest.
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Around the country there were some big time upsets, No. 1 Alabama lost to unranked Texas, A&M, No. 10 BYU did the same falling at home to Boise State. The Red River Rivalry was another fantastic game, that saw Spencer Rattle getting replaced and true freshman Caleb Williams engineering a comeback victory for the Sooners over Texas.
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In the top-5 matchup of Big Ten teams, No. 3 Iowa came back at home to defeat No. 4 Penn State. Even though some of the teams inside the top-10 lost, they didn’t drop enough for Notre Dame to really make a move north in the polls. There was however a new No. 1 team.
Here is the latest Coaches Poll, with last week’s ranking in parenthesis.
1 – Georgia (2)
2 – Iowa (3)
3 – Oklahoma (5)
4 – Cincinnati (6)
5 – Alabama (1)
6 – Ohio State (7)
7 – Michigan (8)
8 – Penn State (4)
9 – Michigan State (11)
10 – Oregon (9)
11 – Kentucky (14)
12 – Oklahoma State (12)
13 – Notre Dame (13)
14 – Ole Miss (17)
15 – Coastal Carolina (15)
16 – Wake Forest (20)
17 – Florida (18)
18 – Texas A&M (NR)
19 – Arkansas (16)
20 – BYU (10)
21 – NC State (22)
22 – Arizona State (25)
23 – SMU (24)
24 – San Diego State (NR)
25 – Clemson (21)
