Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Boise St. vs. Nevada

So Nevada plays possibly the most complete game of the season and drops a spot in the BCS. Welcome to the BCS era ladies and gentlemen. Does this mean anything? Yes, it means if we lose to Boise St. we will be out of the ranking picture.

If there’s one thing different with this Nevada team this year than from years past its that they can step up to the big game. Look at Cal, BYU, and Fresno State. Sure BYU wasn’t as good as they were thought to be, but that’s a team that we easily would have lost to in the past. We also wouldn’t have beaten Cal in the past, and Fresno State would have been up for grabs. Nevada is not exactly a team that can win when they fall behind, so this year that was a positive, and we almost pulled it out against Hawaii as well. Boise State on the other hand is a completely different story, they might be the best team in the nation, definitely the most complete team if you ask me.

But Boise State has always brought out the best in us, we put up great numbers against them and they don’t seem to look so dominant. In years past we didn’t have the team that could beat them yet it was always close and a nailbiter. This year Nevada HAS the team capable of walking out of Mackay a winner and making talking about Boise State a thing of the past. The sad thing is if we win, we won’t get the recognition we deserve, and well Boise State will be talked about how they just were never a really good team. If we lose, I still don’t see Boise State moving up, even if Oregon and Auburn both lose, I can easily see a 1-loss team moving ahead of Boise State and TCU to play in the national championship game. (I’m working on a nice little piece on the BCS which I’ll post this week)

Judging by the spread for this game, the “experts” think it should be a pretty easy win for the Broncos. I beg to differ. I honestly believe that this game will be decided on the final possession of the game and the difference in score at the end will be 3 points or less.

The key to the game is to get the lead early and play mistake free. If Nevada’s defense can hold the Boise State offense on their first 2 possessions and score on their first 2 possessions, we could be looking at an upset. On the other hand if Boise state does the opposite and holds us on our first 2 possessions, we could be looking at a disappointing night. As far as mistakes, this will be a high intensity game and we could see some fights. Those could be a good thing, what’s a bad thing is Ricky Drake kicking another kickoff out of bounds, what is that? 4 times this year so far?

I don’t expect our defense to hold this team scoreless, but I do know that they are capable of forcing them to punt on 4-6 possessions. On the other hand, our offense, if it gets in rhythm can prove extremely difficult for the Broncos defense to contain. I’m expecting the Nevada secondary to back off a little and allow short passes but try everything to prevent the long ones. Maybe even some 3 deep coverage on 2nd down?

If Nevada is behind by more than 10 at half it’s going to be a tough game to win. Anything closer than that and its anyone’s game. This might prove to be one of the best games of the year

Final Score Prediction

Someone 45 – Someone 48

No comments:

Post a Comment