How Vegas Sees 2012 Unfolding For Houston

[Harry]

North Texas at Houston - Cougars by 23

The Cougars stumbled a little bit out of the blocks against the Mean Green last year, but found their footing and cruised to a 25-point victory. This year the series shifts from Denton to Houston, and while UNT has most of their offensive starters returning (1,100-yard rusher Lance Dunbar excepted), their overall depth does take a hit. In total, North Texas loses 27 of 62 letterwinners. (By way of comparison, the Cougars are expected to be going through a "rebuilding year" and lose 18 of 71 letterwinners from 2011.)

Dan McCarney is a good coach, and in the years to come, he'll have UNT competitive in the new Conference USA. But I just don't think that the 2012 version of the Mean Green has the horses to hang with the Cougars. The 23-point line seems low, if anything.

Read more: http://houston.sbnation.com/houston-cougars/2012/6/19/3088440/Houston-Cougar-College-Football-2012-Betting-Lines-Odds-Las-Vegas

[MeanGreenGlory]

Interesting...

Will someone on the board a little more familiar with Houston's team give us a run down?

Didn't they loose Keenum, their top 2 receivers, and some of their keystone defensive players? And aren't they going through an entire coaching staff change?

I suppose they have better athletes on average, but I think they have just as many question marks coming into the season as we do. At least enough question marks to make the game closer than 23 points.

[H-towngreen]

UH has a good shot at being a top 25 team. Plus the game is at UH

[meanrob]

At first I thought 'wow, that's too high', then I realised I have no handle on how good our secondary will be. Or linebackers.....or pass rush...

[NTXCoog]

Interesting...

Will someone on the board a little more familiar with Houston's team give us a run down?

Didn't they loose Keenum, their top 2 receivers, and some of their keystone defensive players? And aren't they going through an entire coaching staff change?

I suppose they have better athletes on average, but I think they have just as many question marks coming into the season as we do. At least enough question marks to make the game closer than 23 points.

The Houston QB David Piland played as a true freshman in 2010 after both Keenum and Cotton Turner got injured against UCLA. Terrance Broadway (now at ULaLa) started 1 game after the injuries, but Piland started the rest of the season. In 8 games, he had 2641 yards passing, 24 TDs, and 14 INTs. His 330 yards per game would have been good for #3 in the nation between Landry Jones and Brandon Weeden, but he needed to play in 1 more game to be counted in the official rankings. He redshirted last year. A lot of people say UH is going to be bad because Piland's team in 2010 went 5-7. Keenum would probably be good for at least a couple more wins, but the biggest problem that year was defense which was 103rd in yardage and 96th in points. Last year that improved to 62nd and 35th. Moving up 61 places in scoring defense is amazing. Most think the defense will be at least that good this year. Even if it stays in the top 50 in scoring defense, UH will be ok with our offense. In the 8 games Piland started, we averaged 34 PPG. If you're curious about SOS that year, Piland played 3 out of 8 games against teams that finished in the top 25.

The starting Houston RB will be Charles Sims. He was the leading rusher for UH although he split a lot of time with Hayes and Beall. He averaged 7.5 yards per carry. He was also the 4th leading receiver for UH. In 2011, he was 1st team all CUSA. In 2009, he was CUSA freshman of the year. He had to sit out 2010 for academic issues, but in 2011 he made the commissioner's honor roll so hopefully he has that under control.

UH did lose their top 3 receivers. There is a ton of talent though and we'll see who steps up. Leading the way will be Deontay Greenberry, the highly regarded recruit who changed his commitment on signing day from Notre Dame to Houston. There is a TON of speed at WR, so let's see if they can catch the ball. Considering our leading receiver Patrick Edwards was originally a walk on and 3rd leading receiver Tyron Carrier originally came to UH for track, it will interesting to see how 3 & 4 star recruits do. They have a lot to live up to.

Helping Piland out will be an experienced OL where we return 4 out of 5 starters. UH had 2011 1st team, 2nd team, and honorable mention all conference linemen who are coming back.

Losing Sammy Brown and Marcus McGraw on defense will definitely hurt, but we do have 8 starters returning on defense.

Special teams will be solid with UH returning our punter and kicker. Interesting to see who will replace Carrier and Edwards on returns.

Coaching staff? That is a little bit of an unknown. Levine is a first time college head coach, but then again, so were Briles and Sumlin. He looked great in his first game as head coach beating a ranked Penn State in our bowl.

New OC is Mike Nesbitt. He was OC at SFA and West Texas A&M and was very successful at that level. We'll be running the same offense.

New DC is Jamie Bryant. He was LB coach at UH last year. Before that he was DC at Vanderbilt.

[MeanGreenGlory]

Thanks for the info NTXCoog!!

[greenminer]

I've always felt returning experience in the trenches is the best place to look if you want to guess how good a team might be.

[Eagle1855]

I've always felt returning experience in the trenches is the best place to look if you want to guess how good a team might be.

Completely agree. And to that end, I'm not sure how well we fare.

[meangreendork]

It really depends on how well the reload goes on our end. I don't expect UH to be as good as last year, but I don't know how well our team will be figured out by the time of the UH game. I think it'll be a closer game, but I don't know by how much. And should the ball roll our way in the right way and at the right times, our guys might win it.

Edited June 21, 2012 by meangreendork

[UNT Mean Green]

I would expect the UH game to be much closer than last year. Heck, our team at the end of last year versus UH at the end of last year most likely would have been a better ballgame. It should be a good, entertaining ballgame for both teams. I hope the Mean Green nation turns out in full force a la SMU 2006!

[MeanGreenTexan]

We lose Dunbar, they lose Keenum... It's a wash. I think this game will be closer than last year's. If the Mean Green come out focused, they could steal a win.

[NTXCoog]

I've always felt returning experience in the trenches is the best place to look if you want to guess how good a team might be.

Which is why I don't think SMU will be as good as many sites are predicting. They are replacing every member of their OLine and 2 all conference DLine. UH is losing 2 VERY good LBs, but we have our entire DLine and all but one OLine returning.

[NTXCoog]

I would expect the UH game to be much closer than last year. Heck, our team at the end of last year versus UH at the end of last year most likely would have been a better ballgame. It should be a good, entertaining ballgame for both teams. I hope the Mean Green nation turns out in full force a la SMU 2006!

I'm not sure if it would have made much difference. UNT definitely improved as the season went on, but so did UH. In the 10 regular season games after UNT, we had one lower scoring game than UNT (SMU 37), one the same (Tulsa 48), and 8 higher (ranging from 49 to 73 points).

The D also improved. In 6 of 10 remaining regular season games including the last 4, we gave up less than 20 points, and in our bowl game, we gave up 14.

We did have the disaster vs USM with the whole Sumlin interviewing at aTm issue, but we definitely got better as the season went on too.

[Harry]

The key is getting UH early. Their replacement QB is good but unproven with the current cast. Our problem will be the secondary which I am predicting will have at least one true freshman at corner. I agree that Houston will be favored but this game could be tougher than they expect. I expect Chico to do his version of Dickeyball and really try to burn the clock with our line and play field position with our all conference punter.

[NTXCoog]

The key is getting UH early. Their replacement QB is good but unproven with the current cast. Our problem will be the secondary which I am predicting will have at least one true freshman at corner. I agree that Houston will be favored but this game could be tougher than they expect. I expect Chico to do his version of Dickeyball and really try to burn the clock with our line and play field position with our all conference punter.

Clock burning only works against UH if you score almost every time. Out of UH's 85 offensive TDs, 52 of them were under 2 minutes. 20 were under 1 minute. By comparison, UNT had 36 offensive TDs total.

UH lost the time of possession battle in every game except one: USM which was our only loss. Odd statistic, huh? Some of our biggest blowouts had the worst TOP e.g. we scored 63 on Marshall with only 17:45 TOP.

Field position doesn't really matter much either. Out of UH's 85 TDs, 25 of them were 80 yards or more. Out of UH's 186 drives last season, we only had 43 where we gained less than 10 yards. Out of those 43, 5 were to end the game,1 was end of the half, and 1 was a TD. We had almost twice as many TD drives than drives <10 yards.

Our average drive was 44 yards and median drive was 49. Hard to win a field position battle when your opponent averages 44 yards per possesion.

The key to beating UH isn't time of possession or field position. The key is stopping the big TD play. USM allowed 4 TDs against UH. The drives were:

11 plays for 65 yards 5:20

5 plays for 61 yards 1:36

1 play for 4 yards 0:03

12 play for 70 yards 2:38

UH's longest TD play was 50 yards. Next longest was 13.

[UNTexas]

Did Keenum get drafted? (however his name is spelled)

[Quoner]

Did Keenum get drafted? (however his name is spelled)

No. He signed a free agent deal with the Texans after the draft.

[MeanGreenTexan]

Clock burning only works against UH if you score almost every time. Out of UH's 85 offensive TDs, 52 of them were under 2 minutes. 20 were under 1 minute. By comparison, UNT had 36 offensive TDs total.

UH lost the time of possession battle in every game except one: USM which was our only loss. Odd statistic, huh? Some of our biggest blowouts had the worst TOP e.g. we scored 63 on Marshall with only 17:45 TOP.

Field position doesn't really matter much either. Out of UH's 85 TDs, 25 of them were 80 yards or more. Out of UH's 186 drives last season, we only had 43 where we gained less than 10 yards. Out of those 43, 5 were to end the game,1 was end of the half, and 1 was a TD. We had almost twice as many TD drives than drives <10 yards.

Our average drive was 44 yards and median drive was 49. Hard to win a field position battle when your opponent averages 44 yards per possesion.

The key to beating UH isn't time of possession or field position. The key is stopping the big TD play. USM allowed 4 TDs against UH. The drives were:

11 plays for 65 yards 5:20

5 plays for 61 yards 1:36

1 play for 4 yards 0:03

12 play for 70 yards 2:38

UH's longest TD play was 50 yards. Next longest was 13.

None of this stuff means much anymore without the QB that got you there and the coaching staff that called the shots.

That would be like one of us citing how potent our running game is with Lance Dunbar's stats.

[UNT Mean Green]

No. He signed a free agent deal with the Texans after the draft.

Which, in my opinion, is neat that Texans signed him. That could be a great story one day..

[Harry]

The key to beating UH isn't time of possession or field position. The key is stopping the big TD play. USM allowed 4 TDs against UH. The drives were:

11 plays for 65 yards 5:20

5 plays for 61 yards 1:36

1 play for 4 yards 0:03

12 play for 70 yards 2:38

UH's longest TD play was 50 yards. Next longest was 13.

Doesn't the number of plays you get correspond to how many big plays you can land ie, your percentage of hitting a big play goes up the more chances you get to do so??. Appreciate the other stats but you are ascribing these to a system and supposing said system will not be altered by a new field general...my point was I (as a UNT fan) am hoping that it will take Piland (as a new QB) a few games to get this system working like it did in these stats you list.

[NTXCoog]

None of this stuff means much anymore without the QB that got you there and the coaching staff that called the shots.

That would be like one of us citing how potent our running game is with Lance Dunbar's stats.

The difference is that UH has a QB with 8 starts as a true freshman averaging 330 yards and 3 TDs per game. Expanded over a 13 game season (yes, we'll make a bowl this year), that's about 4300 yards and 39 TDs. Not Keenum numbers, but not bad, especially for a true freshman.

What RB does UNT have with any significant amount of starts that you could extrapolate to even 1000 yards over a season?

And helping out Piland, we have a RB (Sims) who last year had about 1400 yards from scrimmage (821 yards rushing on 7.5 YPC and 575 yards receiving) and 13 TDs even though he split time with 2 other RBs who had a combined 1038 yards rushing and 590 yards receiving. Compare that to Dunbar who had 1465 yards from scrimmage and 12 TDs. Admittedly Sims did play in 1 more game than Dunbar.

[NTXCoog]

Doesn't the number of plays you get correspond to how many big plays you can land ie, your percentage of hitting a big play goes up the more chances you get to do so??. Appreciate the other stats but you are ascribing these to a system and supposing said system will not be altered by a new field general...my point was I (as a UNT fan) am hoping that it will take Piland (as a new QB) a few games to get this system working like it did in these stats you list.

Interesting consideration. I'm not going through every play of the season, so I looked at offensive and special teams TDs >=20 yards.

UH had about 1100 offensive plays or about 79 plays per game. We had 40 TDs>=20 yards. Dividing long TDs by number of plays and UH is at about 3.6%

UNT had about 827 plays or about 69 plays per game. I was surprised that UNT only had 10 less offensive plays per game. UNT had 11 TDs >=20 yards or about 1.3%.

Out of curiousity I picked another high octane offense Baylor who was #4 in scoring (UH as #1). They had about 1000 plays or 77 plays per game and 36 TDs >=20 yards. That comes out to 3.6%, almost identical to UH.

Regarding the change in offensive coaching: according to this article, Nesbitt is not only using the same offense, but we're even continuing to use the same terminology as before so there should be little transition for the players learning a new offense. With Keenum mentoring Piland over the last 2 years, including the year Piland played 8 games, I'm guessing he's learned a lot about the offense since he was thrown to the wolves after the 2 QB injuries.

Regarding Piland taking a few games to get into the flow, it's possible. I don't think Keenum was hitting on all cylinders in the early games last year either after coming back from injury. In Piland's freshman year you could argue that it took him some time. But I think we emphasized the run a lot more to help him out once he started. In his last 2 games, he had 467 and 441 yards.

[greenminer]

If both teams are scoring every possession, it doesn't matter what style of play you use. Obviously, with UH's amazing TD/possession ratio, it made little difference last year. That doesn't negate the value of TOP against Houston, though.

If you're looking to stop the big play, I think we would agree a rested defense would increase your chances of that.

Unofficially, as a CUSA fan, I've watched other teams employ a newer tactic that is gaining popularity against Houston: it's the get-a-cramp-and-official-timeout-to-stop-that-ridiculous-Case-Keenum-offense-that's-been-rolling-for-a-decade-oh-God-is-he-ever-going-to-graduate ploy.

I think we might have a chance.

[Harry]

I thought Keenum looked human in the first half of our game last year and like a Heisman QB in the second. In fact that half was one of the best performances from a QB I have seen in a long time.

[NTXCoog]

If both teams are scoring every possession, it doesn't matter what style of play you use. Obviously, with UH's amazing TD/possession ratio, it made little difference last year. That doesn't negate the value of TOP against Houston, though.

If you're looking to stop the big play, I think we would agree a rested defense would increase your chances of that.

Unofficially, as a CUSA fan, I've watched other teams employ a newer tactic that is gaining popularity against Houston: it's the get-a-cramp-and-official-timeout-to-stop-that-ridiculous-Case-Keenum-offense-that's-been-rolling-for-a-decade-oh-God-is-he-ever-going-to-graduate ploy.

I think we might have a chance.

I still don't think TOP is the issue. Like I said, the only game that UH won the TOP battle, we lost. UH scores so fast, it's usually UH's defense that tires more than the opponent's D. Out of 85 offensive TDs, only 4 took longer than 4 minutes. Only 11 took 10 or more plays. The only teams to really beat Keenum with a TOP game was UCF and Air Force in 2009 and our defense has improved since then. UH's lowest 2 TOP games last season were 17:45 vs Marshall and 21:25 vs Rice. The scores of those games were 63-28 and 73-34.

And that cramp ploy hasn't worked yet. SMU is the worst at it and UH has beaten them 6 straight. Tulsa and TT used it too in losses. I'm not one to boo injured players, but when you see players fake injuries frequently, sometimes real injuries get booed because it looks like another fake one.