Welcome back, college football fans, as we prepare for our preview of tonight’s big game. Airing at 7:30 Eastern on ESPN, we will see the 10-seed Miami FL (13-2/6) take on undefeated and top seed Indiana (15-0/1). We don’t have the numbers, but we are willing to bet very few picked these two teams to be in this game. Not that long ago, if you had told us that Indiana would be involved in 6 games against ranked teams with differentials of 53 points, 5 points, 10 points, 3 points, 35 points and 34 points, we would have remarked that we were proud of the Hoosiers for having a couple one-score games in there. Indiana won the six games against Illinois, Iowa, Oregon, Ohio St, Alabama, and Oregon again by 140 points or 23.3 points per game. Those 5 teams only gave up 17 points a game but lost to Indiana by 23 points a game. This team has not been impressive because they’ve won. They’ve been impressive because their average game is 42.6-11.1 (31.5-point margin on average). They did it against teams that were 114-83 (.579) which is above average. A couple of metrics we haven’t pulled out in a while that we created at the GCR drive how dominant Indiana has been. Offensive Efficiency Rating (OER) for the Hoosiers is 182 (best in the nation) which means that for every 10.0 points an opponent normally allows, IND scores 18.2 points – we see that in the point differential against the six teams above. Only 5 teams in Division I scored 42.0 points per game: Alabama St (42.4), North Texas (44.8), Notre Dame (42.0), Tarleton (42.4), and Indiana (42.6). Defensive Efficiency Rating (DER) for Indiana is 244 (2nd behind Ohio St’s 292) which means that for every 24.4 points an opponent normally scores, the Hoosiers allow just 10.0. Only 3 Division I teams allowed fewer than 12.0 points per game: Texas Tech (11.8), Ohio St (9.3), and Indiana (11.1).
…..
They face a team that has come into its own in the playoffs. Miami also played 6 ranked teams winning 4 of those games including all 3 in the playoffs. They beat Notre Dame (3-point differential), Texas A&M (7), Ohio St (10), and Mississippi (4). They lost to Louisville (3) and SMU (6) which were their only blemishes. They netted just +15 (or 2.5 points per game) against those ranked opponents. BUT they beat the only common opponent, Ohio St, by 10 while Indiana beat them by just 3. Overall, they outscored their opponents 31.6-14.0 on average (17.6-point differential) against opponents that were 114-77 (.597) – better than Indiana’s opponents by that metric. The OER is a solid 132 (32nd) and their DER is elite at 218 (6th). Can they slow down Indiana’s offense enough to stay with them for 60 minutes. Indiana’s closest game was against Ohio St which had the best defense in the country this year. Miami is on a roll winning 3 games in a row in which they were the lower seed – not bad for the last team in the playoffs this season.
…..
The big question is “who wins?” Vegas likes Indiana-8.5 to complete the dream season and go 16-0. The GCR absolutely agrees at 62.0% and to cover.
…..
That’s it. Why aren’t you watching the game? JoJo and G
