{"id":655,"date":"2007-10-07T08:34:27","date_gmt":"2007-10-07T15:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/07\/weekend-update-sports-october-7-2007\/"},"modified":"2007-10-07T08:34:27","modified_gmt":"2007-10-07T15:34:27","slug":"weekend-update-sports-october-7-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/07\/weekend-update-sports-october-7-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Update Sports: October 7, 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The underdog continues his romp through the college football season with <b>USC<\/b> stepping up as the latest high profile victim&#8230;More on the developing season in the entry below.<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<h2>OSU Opponent Watch<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Youngstown State<\/b> (4-2) &#8211;  Played <b>Southern Illinois<\/b> on the road, lost 17-24. Conclusion: Unexpected Loss<\/li>\n<li><b>Akron<\/b> (3-3) &#8211; Played <b>Western Michigan<\/b> on the road, won 39-38. Conclusion: Unexpected Win<\/li>\n<li><b>Washington<\/b> (2-3) &#8211; Bye week.<\/li>\n<li><b>Northwestern<\/b> (3-3) &#8211; Played <b>Michigan State<\/b> on the road, won 48-41 in OT. Conclusion: Unexpected Win<\/li>\n<li><b>Minnesota<\/b> (1-5) &#8211; Played <b>Indiana<\/b> on the road, lost 20-40. Conclusion: Expected Loss<\/li>\n<li><b>Purdue<\/b> (5-1) &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/06\/buckeyes-dominate-boilermakers-23-7\/\" target=\"_blank\" >Played <b>Ohio State<\/b> at home, lost 7-23<\/a>. Conclusion: Expected Loss<\/li>\n<li><b>Kent State<\/b> (3-3) &#8211; Played <b>Miami (Ohio)<\/b> at home, lost 13-20. Conclusion: Unexpected Loss<\/li>\n<li><b>Michigan State<\/b> (4-2) &#8211; Played <b>Northwestern<\/b> at home, lost 41-48 in OT. Conclusion: Devestating Loss<\/li>\n<li><b>Penn State<\/b> (4-2) &#8211; Played <b>Iowa<\/b> at home, won 27-7. Conclusion: Expected Win<\/li>\n<li><b>Wisconsin<\/b> (5-1) &#8211; Played <b>Illinois<\/b> on the road, lost 26-31. Conclusion: Tough Loss.<\/li>\n<li><b>Illinois<\/b> (5-1) &#8211; Played <b>Wisconsin<\/b> at home, won 31-26. Conclusion: Quality Win<\/li>\n<li><b>Michigan<\/b> (3-2) &#8211; Played <b>Eastern Michigan<\/b> at home, won 33-22. Conclusion: Tougher than Expected Win<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Buckeye opponent&#8217;s records after the sixth week, 42-28. After 3 weeks of conference play, <b>Ohio State<\/b>, <b>Illinois<\/b>, and <b>Michigan<\/b> have no losses and are in contention for the Big 10 championship. <b>Penn State<\/b> rebounded with a win over sagging <b>Iowa<\/b>, <b>Indiana<\/b> continues to surprise blasting <b>Minnesota<\/b>. <b>Michigan<\/b> struggled again with an athletic quarterback running the spread (surprise, surprise.) And <b>Illinois<\/b> is playing hard-nosed football again knocking <b>Wisconsin<\/b> from the ranks of the unbeaten. With <b>Missouri&#8217;s<\/b> play (the lone Illini loss) &#8211; this team looks tough and for real. I&#8217;m not completely sold on them yet, but the talent level is certainly higher and they&#8217;re playing well together.<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<h2>Quick Hits from Around College Football<\/h2>\n<p>\nTeams that look like mythical national championship (MNC) contenders from week 5: <b>LSU<\/b>, <b>Ohio State<\/b>,and <b>California<\/b>.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThese are the undefeated survivors; their play to-date and\/or competition level leaves room for doubt:<br \/>\n<b>Arizona State<\/b>, <b>Boston College<\/b>, <b>Cincinnati<\/b>, <b>Kansas<\/b>, <b>Missouri<\/b>, <b>Connecticut<\/b>, <b>South Florida<\/b>, and <b>Hawaii<\/b> .<br \/>\n<br \/>\nThese teams are the &#8220;Top 10&#8221; of the 1 loss club:<br \/>\n<b>Oklahoma<\/b>, <b>USC<\/b>, <b>Illinois<\/b>, <b>Oregon<\/b>, <b>South Carolina<\/b>, <b>West Virginia<\/b>, <b>Kentucky<\/b>, <b>Wisconsin<\/b>, <b>Virginia<\/b>, and <b>Indiana<\/b><br \/>\n<br \/>\nGame of the week? It&#8217;s a no-brainer. <b>Stanford<\/b> 24, <b>USC<\/b> 23 in Southern California&#8230;This arguably, is as bad, if not worse than the <b>Michigan<\/b> meltdown against <b>App State<\/b> in week one. Runner up: <b>Notre Dame<\/b> 20, <b>UCLA<\/b> 6. The Bruins ruined Charlie&#8217;s perfect season &#8211; I&#8217;m happy the streak didn&#8217;t end against a Big 10 team. So much for <a href=\"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/27\/which-conference-is-worst\/\" target=\"_blank\" >the Pac 10 being the strongest conference&#8230;<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>\nMismatch of the week, Division III <b>Wittenberg<\/b> whipped <b>Earlham<\/b> on the road, 73-0. Not a good week for Indiana teams playing Ohio teams&#8230;<br \/>\n<br \/>\nMy Special Top 12 rankings: (Why Top 12? That&#8217;s where you need to be to get into BCS contention.) Once again, due to underdogs biting, the rankings get a shakeup. Last week, I gave undefeated teams the benefit of the doubt. This week, there is a tiering, undefeated teams playing well are tier 1, once defeated teams rebounding are tier 2, undefeated teams not likely to stay perfect are tier 3, and once defeated teams that haven&#8217;t rebounded are tier 4.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>LSU<\/b> &#8211; On the ropes for 3 quarters, they pulled it out when it mattered. They don&#8217;t look as unbeatable these days.<\/li>\n<li><b>California<\/b> &#8211; Sometimes a bye week is all that is required&#8230;<\/li>\n<li><b>Ohio State<\/b> &#8211; A quality road win, the offense regressed this week.<\/li>\n<li><b>Missouri<\/b> &#8211; May actually be in position to win the Big 12 after blasting <b>Nebraska<\/b>, who&#8217;d a thunk it?<\/li>\n<li><b>Boston College<\/b> &#8211; Mushed the MAC this week, rolling along a little under the radar.<\/li>\n<li><b>Oklahoma<\/b> &#8211; Redeemed at the Red River.<\/li>\n<li><b>Oregon<\/b> &#8211; Bye week.<\/li>\n<li><b>Illinois<\/b> &#8211; Quality win over <b>Wisconsin<\/b> (who had been asking for it all season).<\/li>\n<li><b>Cincinnati<\/b> &#8211; Quality road win over <b>Rutgers<\/b>.<\/li>\n<li><b>South Florida<\/b> &#8211; Struggled in win over 3-3 <b>Florida Atlantic<\/b> &#8211; <b>Kentucky<\/b> beat them by 28 a week ago&#8230;<\/li>\n<li><b>Arizona State<\/b> &#8211; Struggled against a bad <b>Washington State<\/b> team.<\/li>\n<li><b>USC<\/b> &#8211; Probably shouldn&#8217;t be here, but too talented to completely abandon. They&#8217;ve had their stinker game, look for them to win out and then moan about being left out of the MNC game.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>\nMy Special Bottom 5 rankings: (Why bottom 5? If you finish there you should be relegated to I-AA) &#8211; This week, we&#8217;ve had a shakeup at the bottom of the standings too with Notre Dame and Rice, gasp, winning! <\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><b>UCLA<\/b> &#8211; They&#8217;re an honorary #1 for getting blown out by Utah and then breaking Notre Dame&#8217;s perfect winless season yesterday.<\/li>\n<li><b>Florida International<\/b> &#8211; 0-6 this season.<\/li>\n<li><b>Utah State<\/b> &#8211; 0-5 this season.<\/li>\n<li><b>Colorado State<\/b> &#8211; 0-5 this season.<\/li>\n<li><b>Marshall<\/b> &#8211; 0-5 this season.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>\nIn the coming week I&#8217;ll post an <b>Kent State\/OSU<\/b> preview, a game review of <b>Kent State\/OSU<\/b>, and a Weekend Update Sports edition. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The underdog continues his romp through the college football season with USC stepping up as the latest high profile victim&#8230;More on the developing season in the entry below. OSU Opponent Watch Youngstown State (4-2) &#8211; Played Southern Illinois on the road, lost 17-24. Conclusion: Unexpected Loss Akron (3-3) &#8211; Played Western Michigan on the road, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montaraventures.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}