Traditional Stats

These stats aren’t really going to tell the whole story, but the advanced stats might tell you a bit more. In any event, West Virginia is Texas Tech dropped a few points across the board. That’s not terrible, that’s just the way that it is when you play on the road and your starting quarterback is a bit dinged up.

Against Kansas state, the rushing attack took a bit of a hit and that’s a bit understandable. Still though, the numbers are off the charts, the yards per attempt and the points per play are all top of the class.

For West Virginia, I’m a bit surprised the points per play isn’t higher, and that speaks to the fact that WVU just hasn’t scored a ton this year. Still though, I would have thought that they would have put up bigger numbers against Youngstown State or Missouri, but the Mountaineers really just haven’t had a big-time offensive outing. And maybe the biggest part of it that is a bit confounding is the red zone offense, which seems a bit low and maybe that bodes well for Texas Tech’s defense.

The Texas Tech defense stayed pretty static. The biggest eye-opener was that the defense is allowing a higher red zone scoring percentage than the offense is scoring. That’s no bueno.

West Virginia isn’t too far away from Texas Tech’s in terms of yards per play, but the points per play is significantly lower. they literally bend, but don’t break hardly at all and that’s danged impressive. Am also surprised about WVU’s third down conversion rate, which is really high, but again, the Mountaineers really don’t allow a bunch of points in the red zone.

Advanced Stats

You’re not going to believe me, but Texas Tech is favored by the S&P+ numbers and has a 63% chance of winning this game. That’s higher than I would have guessed. WVU isn’t great at anything other than they’re pretty consistent passers, but they aren’t as good running the ball and that’s not something I would have guessed. They can be explosive, but they’re just barely in the top third of teams in terms of explosiveness running the ball.

Defensively, Texas Tech is still struggling mightily and they are, relatively speaking, limiting teams in explosive plays and that’s encouraging. For WVU, the defensive is very respectable and they pretty much do everything very well. WVU has good numbers, but I wonder how much that has to do with the overall offensive numbers of their opponents. I’m guessing that they have benefited from their schedule as much as just playing well. I think Texas Tech should be able to run on WVU.

Oh, and despite all of the bad defensive numbers, statistically, Texas Tech is favored with the advanced stats. Go figure. Now, this team needs to figure out how to not let the penalties and mistakes beat them.