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Holiday Bowl : Nebraska vs. Arizona : YPPSYS NCAA FBS College Football Bowl Game Predictions 2009 / 2010 Season

By Andis Kaulins

December 30, 2009, Wednesday

15. Holiday Bowl, San Diego, CA, Nebraska vs. Arizona, 8:00 pm

The opening line on the Holiday Bowl game between the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the Arizona Wildcats saw this game as even, and the Arizona Wildcats are now surprisingly seen by the line as 1-point favorites, in spite of the Huskers narrow 13-12 loss in the Big 12 championship game to highly-ranked Texas, a game which Nebraska actually deserved to win.

Nebraska already beat a Stoops-coached team this year - the better of the two Stoops teams - and so a Nebraska loss in this game is unlikely.

Apparently the oddsmakers are impressed by the Wildcats last regular season game, in which they vanquished a relatively weak Southern Cal team, 21-17, gaining 239 yards passing on 22- of 40 completions. They will have difficulty gaining comparable yardage against the Nebraska defense, which has been running in a 4-1-6, 4-0-7 viz. 5-6 formation ever since midseason, i.e. with more-or-less 6 defensive backs and a (4-to-) 5-man rush, including the nation's best lineman, award-winning Ndamukong Suh, the AP college football player of the year:

Nebraska has a defense statistically similar to that of the Iowa Hawkeyes, who beat Arizona 27-17 early in the season, allowing only 8 first downs, and the Husker defense is even better than that of Iowa, compensating all season long for an anemic offense. The game will be played at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego on turfgrass (made in Arizona), and this might give the Wildcats a bit of an unfair home field advantage :-) so one has to be careful in prognostications.

NU had 5 first downs against Texas as the helpless offensive coordination staff of Nebraska amazed the nation with its inept playcalling. Seldom has there been such a great gap between the offensive and defensive units of a college football team - and this can only be a function of two competence levels in offensive and defensive coordination. One can only hope that there will be absolutely necessary changes made in the offensive coaching staff when the season ends. Wishful thinking can not make untalented coaches competent. Perhaps some people are better at recruiting than coaching? Certainly possible, and maybe their responsibilities should be tailored according to their talents. Just a suggestion, mind you.

Our call: YPPSYS I ranks the Cornhuskers 20th with a rating of -0.1 and Arizona 29th with a rating of-0.4, or a difference of 0.3 x 9 = 2.7 points. YPPSYS II by the schedule-adjusted margin of victory MOV rates the Huskers 13th at 10.6 points and Arizona 28th at 5.6 points, or a five-point advantage to the Cornhuskers. We call it for Nebraska 26-14 on the assumption that the sputtering nationally 102nd-ranked offense will have been tweaked in the interim and that freshman QB Cody Green will also play some as a run-and-pass QB - how about a pistol or wildcat formation?

Full post as published by LawPundit on December 28, 2009 (boomark / email).