MORGANTOWN — Full disclosure here: I’ve always been a stats and numbers kind of guy, even as a little kid.
My fascination with sports cards as a youngster wasn’t for the picture on the front, it was to read and memorize all the rushing yards and batting averages on the back.
And I believe — except on the rarest of occasions — that the way teams are trending can be dictated by numbers.
For those who aren’t stat geeks, we’ll try to keep this as interesting as possible, and we’ll start with this prediction:
The WVU football team will not find itself playing in many, if any at all, defensive struggles the rest of the season.
Now, you say that’s an easy one considering the Mountaineers’ offense has been pretty good, while their defense has struggled so far.
It goes deeper than just the obvious, because if you look around at what’s happening in the Big 12, what WVU is going through, so is the rest of the league.
So, let’s dive deeper for a moment.
There have been just 18 out of a possible 90 Big 12 games played thus far, and in those 18 games, Big 12 teams are averaging nearly four points more per game (32.5) than they did last season (28.8).
You ask: Come on, how much difference does four points per game truly make?
Well, if you got a little money on a Big 12 game and your team is spotting three points, four points could mean the difference between a great or terrible weekend.
In only one of those 18 games did both Big 12 teams score less than 20 points — last Saturday’s 14-11 victory by Kansas over Iowa State.
The other 17 games saw both schools score more than 20, usually much more.
The argument from the other side is that it’s still relatively early and defenses will begin to figure things out.
Those were basically the exact thoughts of WVU head coach Neal Brown.
“I don’t think it’s quite to the point to where it was six, seven, eight years ago,” Brown said. “I think some of the scoring will slow down a little bit with the more video that becomes available. There are some really good defensive coaches in this league, so the more film that’s out there, I think you’ll see scoring come down a little bit.”
Maybe that happens to a degree, but it doesn’t always happen like that. The best example I can think of is last season’s WVU men’s basketball team.
The Mountaineers began last season getting out-rebounded by 15 against Oakland and then by 16 against Pitt.
Again, it was very early in the season and over the course of the coming weeks, especially with how Huggins drills and stresses rebounding to his players, you’d think WVU would improve in that category.
Yet, the Mountaineers never really did and they finished as the next-to-last team in the Big 12 in rebounding.
I believe stats, no matter what part of the season it is, will generally tell you who a team is, and when you look at Big 12 teams, there’s going to be some real shoot-outs the rest of the way.
Brown went on to say that offenses are ahead of defenses right now in the Big 12, because teams had more graduation and transfer portal losses on the defensive side of the ball.
“There’s a lot of older defensive players who were in the league last year when it was a defensive-dominant league that are gone,” Brown said. “Everybody is a little younger defensively, but I do think some of the scoring will slow down as these defensive coaches have more film.”
It’s certainly one way of looking at it and it’s naive to think one or two Big 12 schools won’t get better defensively over the course of the next nine weeks.
If you’re a WVU fan, you better pray one of those teams is the Mountaineers.
But, there’s no way all 10 schools are just going to suddenly get better on defense. It’s never worked that way, never will.
And so, if you’re really wondering what the rest of the season will be like for the Mountaineers, don’t be afraid to let the numbers guide you.
What they’ve said so far is there’s certainly room for improvement.
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