This talk from camp about UK’s offense performing better and its defensive concerns got me thinking about what UK’s points found and points allowed needs to be to get to a bowl. Considering this I charted out the past twelve years of average points scored and allowed for UK. In doing this exercise I wanted to see what UK was doing in the bowl years that lead to six wins and predict what we might do this year. I’m really trying to figure out if we could get to a bowl based on UK’s points scored and allowed trends.
Below is the chart with the points scored and allowed categories and their differential. I also included the Sagarin rank and strength of schedule for perception of the team’s performance quality as well as the year’s difficulty of play. To be helpful I highlighted the good statistics in green and the poor statistics in red.
Couple notes:
-first thing that jumped out to me was the bowl years 06-10 we had the best performance in one category or another. There is no best performance outside of that.
-only the bowl years have a positive point differential.
-2006 was an anomaly. These stats indicate that the team shouldn’t have gone to a bowl or had an 8-5 win season. I think it kind of indicates that they were a good team in the process of figuring it out.
-only if 2007’s offense had 2008’s defense, and schedule for that matter. Could have been a 10 win team or better.
-poor 2012 Joker had the hardest schedule.
-it appears the past two years, UK has been trending up
So in analyzing the stats I don’t think I have anything definitive from it but I’ll take a conservative stab at what I think the team will do this year. I’m not convinced Barker is the greatest quarterback but UK’s offense has weapons so I’m going to say 30 pts/game. Defense I think is going to do worse this year but with an improved offense I hope they won’t be on the field as much as they’ve been the past couple years. I’m going to predict 28 points allowed. This will give us a point differential of +2 and that should be enough for six wins and a chance at a bowl but no guarantees.
I’m curious to know what you might think the points scored and allowed might be, or any other opinion you might have about this. Thanks for the comments...
Below is the chart with the points scored and allowed categories and their differential. I also included the Sagarin rank and strength of schedule for perception of the team’s performance quality as well as the year’s difficulty of play. To be helpful I highlighted the good statistics in green and the poor statistics in red.
Couple notes:
-first thing that jumped out to me was the bowl years 06-10 we had the best performance in one category or another. There is no best performance outside of that.
-only the bowl years have a positive point differential.
-2006 was an anomaly. These stats indicate that the team shouldn’t have gone to a bowl or had an 8-5 win season. I think it kind of indicates that they were a good team in the process of figuring it out.
-only if 2007’s offense had 2008’s defense, and schedule for that matter. Could have been a 10 win team or better.
-poor 2012 Joker had the hardest schedule.
-it appears the past two years, UK has been trending up
So in analyzing the stats I don’t think I have anything definitive from it but I’ll take a conservative stab at what I think the team will do this year. I’m not convinced Barker is the greatest quarterback but UK’s offense has weapons so I’m going to say 30 pts/game. Defense I think is going to do worse this year but with an improved offense I hope they won’t be on the field as much as they’ve been the past couple years. I’m going to predict 28 points allowed. This will give us a point differential of +2 and that should be enough for six wins and a chance at a bowl but no guarantees.
I’m curious to know what you might think the points scored and allowed might be, or any other opinion you might have about this. Thanks for the comments...
