-Bumped. GO BRUINS. - BN Eds.

Warning: this post is long overdue and thus contains an amalgam of thoughts that have been gathering for the last few college basketball recruiting cycles, it may be a little scattered.

Earlier this week today, DC an TY posted a nice back-and-forth in which they discussed a few questions/concerns about the forthcoming Bruin basketball season. Amongst their topics of debate was the question "what's different about this top ranked class?" While I think that they made several solid points, I think they missed on one key difference between this class and almost every other recruiting class that college basketball has seen over the last 10-15 years; *we're bringing in two consensus top five talents and that's a very big deal.*

One of my big issues with recruiting rankings and people's perception of those rankings is that people tend to believe that being a top 100 player really means something. Truth is, there are plenty of top 100 players who will never amount to much on the next level, let alone the level after that. Hell, you can say the same about plenty of McDonald's All-Americans. Ray Young anybody. James Keefe anybody. But the more important truth of the matter is that consensus top 4-5 ranked players are close to can't-miss commodities.

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Disclaimer: yes, I just watch Moneyball and yes, this post was partially inspired by some of the ideas tossed around in the picture.

With Moneyball and our struggling football program in mind I decided to do some number crunching to try and find out which statistics tend to correspond closely with Win Percentage in college football. First I went to this site and downloaded every statistic they had for the 2010 season. I then converted totals to per/game figures and proceeded to find the correlation coefficient for every set of stats when matched up with the corresponding Win Percentages.

Just so everyone's on the same page, the correlation coefficient is a number between +1 and -1 representing the strength of the relationship between two sets of data, both +1 and -1 imply a direct relationship between the two variables, the closer you get to 0, the weaker the correlation.

So out of the 227 statistics I found on the site (ranging from tackles for loss per game to 2 point conversions allowed per game), here are your top ten in terms of correlation to win percentage:

So, for the most part, this list should elicit a massive "no s***" from the crowd. Obviously many of these statistics are directly linked to each other ("So you're saying teams with a lot of touchdowns also score a lot of points and make a lot of PATs and their opponents return a lot of kicks?"). The stat I'd like to focus on though, is one of the two oddballs - "QB Rating".

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Bumped. Great post. - BN Eds.

The following is a brief, primarily UCLA-centric account of my Monday morning at the Adidas Super 64 tournament here in Vegas. 

8:56AM – I arrive at Rancho High bright and early to catch Shabazz Muhammad and his Dream Vision squad against the DC Assault.  Along with Shabazz, Dream Vision features three other UCLA targets in Winston Shepard, Robert Upshaw and Xavier Johnson.

9:01AM – There’s a strong UNLV contingent in the stands with dreams of Shabazz and a return to glory dancing through their heads.

9:03AM – Moments after tip-off Winston Shepard throws down a nice little breakaway dunk thanks in part to some less than intense D on his part.

9:08AM – Shabazz goes all Dr. J with a tomahawk jam on the break.  In the two games I’ve watched, I’ve noticed that he seems equally comfortable and explosive jumping off of one foot or two.

9:15AM – After fumbling a pass for a turnover and getting shook on the other end, Robert Upshaw gets yanked and heads straight for the Gatorade cooler.  Shades of Bobo.

9:18AM – Scanning the opposite bleachers (aka the college coaches section), I notice a decided lack of star power relative to Saturday when every big name in the business was there for Dream Vision vs. Double Pump Elite.  At the moment, the most recognizable face in the crowd is Duke assistant Steve Wojciechowski.  Maybe it’s the Duke hater in me but at this point I think to myself "what the hell did Wojo ever do to be instantly recognizable?"

9:30AM – DC has a one point lead at the half and it would be worse if not for some inspired play from Dream Vision back-up big man Ronnie Stanley.  Stanley’s ability to dominate the interior makes Upshaw look that much more ineffectual in retrospect.

9:33AM – Finally some star power on the opposite side of the building.  CBH has arrived.

9:54AM – Winston Shepard gets a steal and goes coast-to-coast for a pretty finger roll.  At 6’8" 200+ with athleticism and solid handle he’s the only player in the game that I would call prototypical for his position (small forward).

10:05AM – A stretch of domination from Shabazz includes a turnaround floater, a finger roll and a dunk in traffic; it culminates with a drive that draws a DC Assault triple team.  Shabazz easily spots the open man, Xavier Johnson, for a nail-in-the-coffin dunk.

10:20AM – With no UCLA targets playing in any of the three 10:20 games I decide to grab an early lunch at the concession stand.  Hot dog, nachos and a Pepsi for a total of $4 - I love high school sports!

10:50AM – I’ve moved over to the North gym to watch Javan Felix.  The New Orleans point guard was the cover boy for yesterday’s ESPN Recruiting page after a strong showing on Day 2.  It’s easy to see why coaches are falling for the kid as he directs traffic from the top of the key.  He’s the first point guard I’ve seen in two days that brings to mind phrases like "floor general" and "quarterback".  As of yesterday morning, Felix liked us and Texas.  I’m not sure what he’s thinking after the signing of Doiminic Artis.

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With Jerime Anderson's alleged transgression potentially serving as the fitting conclusion to the exasperating story that was the '08 recruiting class, I thought I would try to quantify the ineffectiveness of our futile five relative to other #1 recruiting classes in recent years.

I figured that the best way to determine the relative worth of a recruiting class would be to cut to the chase and look at win shares.  Basically, win shares tell us how many wins a player was worth to his team in a given year.  At first I looked at Total Win Shares over the life of the recruiting class and found the following:

Of course, I quickly realized two problems with this measure - it undersells the value of smaller classes (like the three-man LSU recruiting class of '03) and it undersells the value of Calipari's one-and-done mercenary squads seeing as how they made big impacts in very little time.  So I then looked at Win Shares Per Player Per Year and found the following:

I would offer further commentary here but I'm too depressed.

So yesterday, Achilles put up a nice post discussing the fact that Ben Ball Warriors tend to exceed expectations on the next level, due in large part to their strong fundamentals.  That sounds great!  When the optimist and CBH supporter in me processes that information it comes out as follows

"Ben Howland is one of the best coaches in the country at preparing his kids for the NBA." 

Of course, if I were to take a step back and think about the "UCLA factor" from the perspective of a talented high school b-ball stud, I might come away with the following notion -

"nobody consistently churns out undervalued prospects like Ben Howland."

To further examine this thought, I decided to look back at the last several drafts and compare where Ben Ballers were drafted to where they should have been drafted, using the 2010-2011 NBA player rankings from CBSsportsline to denote each player's relative value.  Not surprisingly, each and every player that Ben Howland sent into the draft was undervalued on draft day, from Russell Westbrook who could have gone one spot higher, to Ryan Hollins who could have gone about 36 spots higher.  Of course, this wasn't taking into account the specific needs of teams on draft day, but I'd be willing to bet that the Knicks, knowing what they know now would be willing to take point guards DC or Jrue Holiday over power forward Jordan Hill regardless of their needs at the time.

Here's a breakdown of where CBH's players were drafted and where they probably would go if teams had a shot at that same draft knowing what we know now:

Now, here's that same graph viewed through the eyes of a modern high elite prospect:

While you and I may be thinking, "that's all well and good, but it's the second contract that counts," I have a feeling that most modern prospects are smart enough to consider the financial implications of their college choices but still cocky enough to think that the coaching they recieve is less important to their eventual success than their natural talents.  In other words, my guess is that most high school studs are looking for a springboard into a big rookie contract and banking on their ability to prove themselves once they get to the next level.  Unfortunately, UCLA under CBH has proven to be a relatively springless springboard.
 

Last year, prior to the '09-'10 NCAA basketball season I went through my preseason ritual of trying to find the best value for a futures bet (a bet on which team would win the NCAA Tournament that season).  I had an idea that Purdue might be my pick, they were returning all their key contributors, including some NBA talent from a 27-win squad.  It seemed like a lock. 

Then I found a team that one-upped the Boilermakers.  Plucky little Butler was returning every player, including some NBA talent, from a 26-win team and they were starting the season at 80-1 to win the title.  So, I plopped down $124 on the Bulldogs and later that March I plopped down $7700 on Duke in the Championship game.  End result - LasVegasBruin takes his girl on a couple of nice little vacations.

I told you that story to tell you this one, next year's Ben Ballers could join last year's Butler team as the only other squad in the last 10 years of which the following could be said:

A. finished the previous year in the RPI top 50

B. returned all of its players

C. returned multiple future NBA players

Here's a list of the other teams that came close to meeting those three criteria over the past ten seasons (each failing to return 100% of it's production from the previous season):

Note that the only real outlier here ('02-'03 Georgia) technically met my criteria by having two future NBA draft picks but the second of those picks was Rashad Wright, the final pick of the '04 draft who never played a minute in the NBA as far as I can tell.

While I hold little hope that we end up returning every player from this year's team, I just thought I'd illustrate why I feel that complete retention of this year's squad could and almost certainly would mean a return to elite status next season.

Final note: "production" here is defined by the NBA's "efficiency" stat [ (points + rebounds + assists + steals + blocks) - (missed field goals + missed free throws + turnovers) ].

Bumped. Cool analysis leading to good discussion. See BruinEngy's post for more fun data. -BN

Five games into conference play and 17 games into the season, I think we all have pretty well-formed opinions on our basketball team.  So, of course, the mods asked me to bring some numbers into the conversation to see if our opinions match the statistical reality. 

As per usual, the + / - numbers should be taken with a grain of salt as there are many factors that play into individual and team success but at this point in the season, I think the sample size (19 games with exhibition games included) and CBH's substitution patterns make the raw + / - numbers a little more credible.

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For every schizophrenic sports team, there is a schizophrenic fan base.  The Bruins Nation collective is no different.  After the Montana game many, if not most, BNers were seeing visions of another downward spiral of a season featuring a turnover prone offense and lackadaisical defense.  Following Wednesday's victory, those visions gave way to images of 20+ wins and Pac 10 title contention from a team with size, talent and match-up problem makers all over the court. 

The truth is, both of our split personalities are correct.  This squad is capable of going from "hardly-better-than-last-year" to "Top 10 team" depending on whether or not Josh Smith is in the game.  I present to you a tale of two teams, otherwise known as our + / - numbers with and without Josh on the court:

So, just to clarify, if you look at the Wazzu row, against the Cougars Josh played 17 minutes and (obviously) sat 23.  During his 17 minutes on the court, we outscored Wazzu by 20.  During his 23 minutes on the bench, we were outscored by 11.

The most exciting thing about the numbers here, is the realization that with Josh on the court we beat Kansas and dominated Villanova, BYU and Washington State.  The most terrifying thing about the numbers here is the fact that without Josh on the court we were beaten by Cal State Northridge, Cal Poly and UC Davis and pretty much crushed by Villanova, Montana and Wazzu.

Let me know what else jumps out at you, and feel free to offer any theories explaining the outliers of Pacific, VCU and UCI.

Bumped. -BN

Photo Credit: AP

So here's a little statistical food for thought relevant to the UCLA men vs. UConn women debate. 

Yesterday, in response to kevb's Fanpost, both uclaluv and I argued that UConn's record-tying run has a lot to do with the distinct lack of parity in the women's game.  UConn has managed to blow through 88 straight opponents in part because the drop off in talent from top tier teams (like UConn) to the majority of their opponents is so great.  Rather than simply make the assertion without any evidence to back up this claim, I thought I'd try to find some statistical back up.

The best approach I could think of for measuring top tier teams and their middling counterparts was to look at the first and second round performances of #1 seeds in both the men's and women's NCAA tournaments.  I was able to gather data from all but one NCAA tourney since the women went to a 64 teams back in 1994. 

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Before I put up any numbers or graphics, I should note that I've developed my own version of the + / - stat.  In order to alleviate some of the inherent problems of the + / - stat, I've come up with an equation that attempts to adjust for the relative strength of the opponent.  Basically, for every segment of game time played by a five man squad, I find the points gained or lost per/min by that group, subtract the average points per/min gained or lost by the team for that game, then multiply the result by the number of minutes played in that segment.  For an extreme example: +5 over a span of 5 minutes against Northridge (a game we won by 33) isn't worth nearly as much as +5 over 5 minutes against Villanova (a game we lost by 12).

Northridge: (1 - 0.825) * 5 = 0.875

Villanova: (1 - (-0.3)) * 5 = 6.5

So, without further ado, here are the nine lineups that have played together for 10 minutes or more this season, ranked according to their adjusted gain or loss per/minute on the court:

And here are our top 9 rotation players ranked by the adjusted gain or loss per/min experienced by our squad when they are on the court:

Just like last time, I'll abstain from offering my own observations and simply allow BNers to discuss.  The one thing I would note, is that JA's positive adjusted + / - and AS's negative adjusted + / - have a lot to do with their direct relationships with LJ and JS respectively.  That is to say, AS looks bad, in part because he is always on the court when our biggest difference maker (JS) is on the bench.

Bumped. A great topic, which has been discussed previously in this community here, here, and here. For those who have not had the opportunity to share why you bleed blue and gold, this is a great opportunity to get your story in. - BN.

Photo Credit: BigWillieStyles (flickr)

This started as a comment in JeremyD's post and quickly trailed off into tangential territory that I felt could make for a revealing discussion. Specifically, based on the responses of my fellow Bruin sports fanatics, I'd like to determine if it's possible to make die-hard Bruin fans out of apathetic students without the aid of on-field success.  If you don't feel like reading through my story, feel free to skip to the questions in bold at the bottom : )

I, for one, was bred to be a sports fanatic. Growing up, my dad was passionate about football, my mom was a cheerleading coach at our local high school and my older sister was one of her cheerleaders. From the time I was five, we had season tickets to Fresno State football. Back then, Bulldog stadium had grassy hills where their endzone seats are now, so every weekend my family would lay down a blanket at the top of the berm and enjoy a picnic and a ball game. Dinuba High football on Friday and Fresno State football on Saturday were as much a part of my childhood as grandma's house on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Eventually, I hit high school and found that my life continued to revolve in large part around sports. I played basketball and ran track, my clique was a jock clique and I continued to attend all our football games (of course, my attendance at that point had more to do with the fact that there were girls at those games than anything that was happening on the field).

Needless to say, as a UCLA freshmen in '96, Bruin sports had me at hello. The Bruins filled the void left by the suddenly-distant Dinuba Emperors and Fresno State Bulldogs. The fog-filled stadiums and red waves of my youth were replaced by a picturesque Rose Bowl and 8-claps. During my four years on campus, there was no competition for my attention on game days. I camped out for season tickets. I camped out for priority passes. I stood and yelled and jumped 'till I was hoarse and lightheaded. I would have hitch-hiked to the Rose Bowl if I couldn't find a ride. I was devout.

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After dumping on certain aspects of the + / - stat in DCBruin's post-Villanova Fanpost, I felt obligated to put some work in and calculate the + / - numbers that I do find valuable.  As I noted in the above-mentioned Fanpost, I feel for various reasons that + / - is best used to measure the effectiveness of full five-man line-ups.  With that in mind, I broke down the play-by-plays for each of our seven games (I included Westmont and CSLA for the sake of sample size) and found the net gain or loss generated by each line-up.

Of course, this exercise served to remind me of the wonders of permutations as I found that CBH has used 57 different line-ups, with most five man groups having spent less than five minutes of game time together for the entire season.  So with the importance of sample size in mind, I decided to publish only my findings for groups that have spent more than 10 minutes on the court together throughout the course of the young season.  Here they are ranked from top to bottom in order of points-gained-per-minute.

via i217.photobucket.com

To reiterate, the group at the top (JS, BL, TH, ML and LJ) has gained an average of 1.12 points-per-minute on its opponents in the 14.32 minutes that it has played together this season.  Unfortunately, at this point, the original data has been so jumbled in spreadsheets that I couldn't tell you which games those 14.32 minutes came from but I would note that each of the above lineups has seen action together in multiple games.

Now, with slight reservation, I offer the + / - for each player through seven games.  By comparing only heavy rotation players and looking at their per/min numbers rather than totals I would hope to avoid some of the basic pitfalls of the statistic.  Anyway, without further ado:

via i217.photobucket.com

And again, just to make sure everyone's understands what is being depicted here, the number in blue represents the average points-per-minute that the Bruins gain on their opponents when that particular player is in the ballgame. 

Alright, having worked my butt off to bring your that, I'm going to skip the commentary/analysis portion of this Fanpost and simply say "discuss". . .

"I've also heard UCLA might start to recruit me and that was my favorite school growing up, but I haven't heard anything from them just yet."  -  Tyler Bray (circa August '09)*

For those of you who don't know, Tyler Bray, now a freshman in college, just took over the starting QB job at Tennessee last week.  In two varsity starts, Bray has thrown for a total of 648 yards, 8 touchdowns and 0 interceptions.  Thus far in his young career, Bray has thrown 114 passes.  Here's how he stacks up to recent Bruin QBs through 114 attempts:

Now I'm not saying that Tyler Bray is the next Payton Manning.  Nor am I saying that missing out on him is in any way as egregious an oversight as our failure to recruit Michael Jordan and Kevin Durant when they wanted to play basketball at UCLA.  However, I would like to know how a top prospect that wants to come to UCLA doesn't even merit an offer.  

I understand that neither our scholarships nor our recruiting resources are unlimited but in situations like this, I feel that someone dropped the ball.  This seems like the type of slam dunk that recruiters dream about.

* The quote was originally from an ESPN blog but I actually read it in a small town newspaper that my dad had kept.  Bray is from the same tiny (pop 10,000) Central California town that my folks live in.  Fun fact, Bray may end up being the second most famous athlete from Kingsburg, CA, behind former Bruin Olympic champ Rafer Johnson.

Bumped. ICYMI here are some highlights from Tuesday night. GO BRUINS. -N

This will probably be my last highlight video as the rest of the games should be televised.  I just wanted to make sure that everyone who wanted to check out the squad got a chance to do so.  Once again, I apologize for the video quality, I'm no Telemachus.

Btw, the obligatory Blake Arnett joke at the end of the vid is officially my last Blake Arnett joke.  Even if I'm actually poking fun at "Dr. Mexican" I just can't joke about a dude whose per/40 minute averages are 26 points, 40 assists and 13 blocks.  That's productivity people.

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Sorry about the video quality, it was the best I could do given the source material.  A couple notes to meet the 75 word quota:

0:40  Indicative of JA's offensive game last night - under control, took what was given to him

1:33 & 1:53  Stover has a real knack for shot blocking, he may send some players to the line this year but he'll also make up for the occasional defensive lapse from our guards and wings

2:05  Carlino might be quicker than any of us anticipated, he moves his feet well on D both on the ball and in the passing lanes.  That being said, he'll probably get eaten up by bigger guards.

Continued after the jump.

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I know that today on BN has been and will be mostly about mulling over the state of the program but as a fan of college football and specifically as a fan of the Pac 10, I couldn't not share this info.  Sagarin's top 11 as of today:

My only hope is that we can join in on the apparent Pac 10 football renaissance within the next year or two.

I know you're supposed to pass sometimes but...: Currently our designed pass plays result in an average gain of 3.54 yards and our designed runs result in an average of 6.46 yards.

Well you have to pass in long-yardage situations, right?: How long are we talking? Based on the percentages, it makes sense to pass on 3rd and 8 or greater and to run on 3rd and 7 or less. 30.9% of our designed runs result in gains of 7 yards or more, 26.4% of our dropbacks result in gains of 7 yards or more.

Four yards and a cloud of dust: 54.9% of our rushing plays result in gains of 4 yards or more compared to just 36.8% of our passing plays.

Punching it in: Over the last four years, our offense has scored 93 touchdowns and settled for 100 field goals (made). Last year our td-to-made-field-goal ratio was an abysmal 0.66:1. Through five games this year, we've scored 15 tds and settled for just 8 field goals.

Punching it in pt. II: Last year, it took our offense ten games to tally 15 tds.

I had several tidbits/thoughts/observations regarding Bruin football without any way to coherently fit them into one cohesive fanpost; so here goes an incoherent mess:

• For anyone interested, here's how the Pac 10 teams average rankings look through week four according to the computers:

• According to Colley (one of the BCS computer guys) UCLA ranks first in strength of schedule with a rating of 0.742232 out of a possible 0.742232 (if you know the methodology it loses its luster but it's a fun fact nonetheless).

• So far this season, Kevin “The Statue” Prince has rushed for 202 yards in his 30 actual rushing attempts. That's 6.73 ypc for the led-footed QB.

• Aside from Kai Forbath's field goals, no Seniors appeared in the Texas box score. With all due respect to the filthy five (they are our MVPs right now) the future looks pretty bright.

• Before anyone starts comparing this team to the 1997 squad (what with the 0-2 start and potential watershed victory over Texas) let's see what KState and Stanford do this weekend against Nebraska and Oregon. In '97, we lost to Washington State and Tennessee who both finished in the AP top 10.

• On a weekend when Alabama takes on Florida and Texas tackles Oklahoma, College GameDay will be headed to Eugene for the Ducks v. the Trees. Is the Pac 10 starting to gain some national respect?

• With regard to Kiffy's auspicious 4-0 start – Steve Lavin won the Pac 10 outright and went to the Elite 8 in his first year. 'Nuff said.

• CTS slowly destroyed our program in part by trying to force feed a system down the throats of athletes that couldn't handle it. He knew one way to skin a cat and it happened to be a tough way. CRN and CNC have adapted and found a way for this particular group of athletes to skin a cat. Now, let's go out this weekend and skin some cats : )

It's been said already but I think it bears repeating, through week four our opponents are 14-2 with their only losses coming at our hands.  With this tidbit in mind, I decided to see if any other FBS team could make a similar claim.  As it turns out, there is only one. 

Currently, Virginia Tech's opponents are 9-2 with the only losses coming to the Hokies (I find it odd that all of Vtech's opponents have already had a bye week).   Of course, we could be left by our lonesome in this category should Boise State (VTech's first opponent) allow a come-from-behind Beaver victory.

So I was looking through the most up-to-date computer rankings and I thought I might share some of my more interesting Pac 10-related findings.  Just to clarify, these numbers were taken from the four computer ranking systems (Sagarin, Billingsley, Colley, Massey) that are utilized by the BCS and currently available to the public.

1. We don't need the computers to tell us this, but they will anyway - the Pac 10 is pretty tough this year. Through week three, the Pac 10 has four teams with an average ranking under 15.  Here's the full conference breakdown:

That's four top 15 teams for a conference that started the season with one top 15 team according to most news sources.

2. The Pac 10 is pretty tough this year part II. Along with having several high ranking teams, the Pac 10 also has a very high average ranking as a whole.  We are currently third behind the SEC and the Big 12 in terms of average team ranking. And if you take away the best and worst teams from each conference we actually jump the Big 12 to take over the #2 spot.

You might have noticed that eliminating the outliers doesn't do much to most conferences but it allows us to jump significantly, this brings me to my third point...

3. While there are many disagreements amongst rating systems, there is one unifying constant - everyone can agree that Wazzu is terrible.  If the Cougs win no other prize this year, they will at least walk away with the Outlier Trophy, given annually to the team that doesn't even seem to belong in their own conference.  In terms of falling behind the proverbial pack, the only team that even comes close to Wazzu is New Mexico State whose average ranking of 135.75 (that's right, there are at least 15 FCS teams ranked ahead of them) trails 37 points behind the WAC's second worst team, Louisiana Tech.

4. The computers are loving Arizona right now.  Despite the "point-a-minute" offensive heroics of Oregon, the Ducks stand a full two points behind Arizona in terms of average ranking.  Here's how the different ranking systems see the Wildcats:

As far as I can tell, the Colley system is favoring Zona based on the fact that their opponents are a combined 6-0 against other teams this year. Side note: Colley has our three-game strength of schedule ranked second overall behind Notre Dame, sounds about right.

Bumped. GO BRUINS. -N

Like most folks here on BN, I've been mortified by the performance of Kevin Prince so far this season.  Yet somehow, I still find myself going to bat for the sophomore signal caller time and time again.  In debates with friends and family, I've found myself falling back on the same argument, "he's still young and great quarterbacks aren't built in a day."

Yes, I'm sure that there have been a handful of college QBs who figured it all out in no time flat (as far as I know, Peyton Manning was audibilizing in the womb) but I'm also sure that these guys are the exception to the rule.

My hope for KP is that he follows in the footsteps of another Bruin field general who had his struggles early on.  Just out of curiosity, I decided to run a side-by-side statistical comparison of Prince (post-Stanford/346 attempts) and a young Cade McNown (post-Oregon, 1996/340 attempts).  

I'm not sure what's more surprising here, the near mirror-image nature of the numbers or the fact that KP might have a slight edge.  Also note, KP's 6 for 12 for 39 yards and a pick might go down as one of the worst performances in Bruin QB history but it doesn't hold a candle to Cade's 8 for 27 for 39 yards and 3 picks in the third game of his sophomore year.

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When I saw that we didn't do so hot in the NCAA 2011 game simulation posted by Fauxshow, I decided to run my own game simulation with the help of a similarly advance video game.  As you can see from the highlight above, the simulation predicted that Prince and his receiver core will get back in sync tonight to the tune of 600 passing yards.  The running game should also pick up against Stanford, assuming Jetski and the boys have been working on their zig zag and curly-que rushing techniques.  Last but not least, look for Bullough's D to hold it down tonight as it appears that the Trees only run eight different offensive plays.