Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Welcome to statistically Speaking a Ute Nation podcast. I'm a
ute fan Ivan also known as Hype video Ivan on
Twitter and with me, I've got Joe, Dustin and Matt
with me. Why don't you guys introduce yourself to real
quick and we'll get going from there.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Sure, I'll go first. I am Joe Silverswag. I am
the resident wet blanket. It is my job to pull
out all of the predictive statistical analysis that says that
the utes ate all that and to throw ashes on
your dreams. And I'm looking forward to a rousing season
(00:59):
of that activity starting this week, starting this week, but
we'll save that for a few minutes down the road here.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Dusted about your turn? I can't wait.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah, I'm Dustin Birch. I'm another one of the stack
guys for you Nation. I like to take a look
at the experience that the teams have coming back and
what we expect from them. In particular, this week, we're
going to take a look at U c l A
and what we can expect to see. And in my
real life, I'm an attorney and I placed a statistician
(01:31):
here on this podcast, so I'm.
Speaker 5 (01:34):
A financial analyst and by that nature. I love to analyze,
and so I often will write the preview articles of
the opponents for you Nation dot com. And I've looked
into U c l A heavily and I'm quite interested
to hear how how some graph can say that this
(01:55):
team will actually be a good team. So I'm anxious
to have the I don't even have the grat.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
We are as, so this is an interesting I'll be
trying to make the short quick aside. So the way
that my.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
System works is that I take all of the existing
advanced metrics and things like SP plus, ESPN, FPI. There's
a few dozen of them that you can find on MASSI.
And then there's also the vagus lines. Those guys are
i don't know, decromancers or something. They're really good at
their job. And I use all of those things and
(02:29):
pile them together, think about how they're wrong in different ways,
and sort of weight all of those put them together
create a weighted average that creates a score prediction.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
But one of the things that I input into that.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Is a historical track record of how the teams have
competed against each other. And since Utah is due to
the conference, I don't have a lot of data and
we're still building out the moodle, so I don't have
a graph for you. And we will get into these
statistical reasons why I'm maybe a little.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Bit less high on this game than that you might expect.
But so, but it's a it's an interesting time, and
that the chart doesn't say anything, but the chart would
would say sad things if.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
I had it.
Speaker 5 (03:19):
I don't fear the chart this week. I don't fear
it at all.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
It's easy to not fear something that doesn't exist, matter.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Right in the shadows still plus total deniability, right, I
can say, oh, yeah, I just wasn't ready yet. You
go out there so I can see it. It's great.
I gotta do this more. Maybe I just won't do
a chart this year. I'll just make it up as
I go.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
I'll just say you have one in front of you,
and we just have to believe it.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Right here, everybody, you can't see it. It's proprietary, all right,
let's but let's move, let's move, let's move, Dustin, I
don't think you said, ah, yes, is that right?
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (03:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (03:59):
I have expecting Utah to beat UCLA.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
I don't.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
I don't even think it'll be as close as Vegas
thinks it will be in Vegas thinks Utah is gonna
win by a touchdown.
Speaker 5 (04:09):
Yeah, I'm I'm I put it out on Twitter already
thirty eight to thirteen Utah.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
And I don't even feel I'm worry about that.
Speaker 5 (04:16):
This team, the u c l A. No, they're not good.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
What what are They're not good?
Speaker 4 (04:25):
They're they're not good, and they're worse than they were
last year. Despite getting Nico, Ucla is worse than they
were last year. And there were five and seven last year.
Nico not a good five and seven either, Yeah, only
five and.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Made him good Nico. Won't you look at Nico in
any games that are relevant against any top twenty five team,
and he was quite bad.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Who did Nico come over with.
Speaker 5 (04:54):
Was brother?
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Who are the the The core thing that we have
going on for me that there's two key factors in place.
The first is that it is very early in the season.
Early season games have more volatile scores and historically higher
performance for home teams. Ucla is a strong home team.
(05:22):
This is a that's a that's a tough situation. And
then the UCLA I think that Utah fans get really
used to kind of raging on UCLA because Utah's put
them in general, more often than people expected. UCLA has
(05:46):
had some down years. Ucla often has kind of a
funky approach and often misses expectations because the expectations tend
to be sky high and sort of overhype. But if
you step back from the sort of story that we
all tell about UCLA as former Pac twelve followers, there's
(06:09):
still the UCLA Bruins. They still recruit at an extraordinary
high level. They are stacked first, second, third string with
athletes that in general, Utah does not have players that
can compete on just a man up basis in many
many positions on the field. So Utah has to rely
(06:30):
on all of the things that makes Utah a good
football team when they're a good football team, the teamwork
and the discipline and the organization in order to do that.
But you're still looking at a team that's got bigger, faster,
stronger players at almost every single position, and that means
players are going to break open and big runs of
(06:54):
big passes are going to happen, and that introduces the
kind of volatility that just makes it really hard to
predict big wins. UCLA is not a great football team.
Ucla is not a team that anybody's gonna pick to
win a title or anything along those lines. But there's
(07:14):
still just just a heck of a bunch of really
really good athletes on that football team, better athletes than
the user fielding. And at the end of the day,
it's a it's a Jimmy's and Joe's question. And when
I look at like recruiting track record over the last
four years, it's it's it's hard to discount just the
level of talent on that team, the home field advantage,
(07:36):
and there's some of the advanced statistics just don't look
that great. Espn FBI has these teams about four points
apart and has UCLA slightly favored to win by about
fifty two percent. I don't think it's going to be
twenty four to nothing, but it wouldn't surprise me at
all if at the end of the day we have
(07:58):
a score or something in the range of, you know,
maybe twenty eight, twenty five something something like that, with
the UCLA walking away with this one would be my prediction.
Speaker 4 (08:11):
Yeah, I completely disagree for two reasons. One, UCLA was
twenty five points from oh to twelve last year, and
those wins were Hawaii, Rutgers, Nebraska, Iowa, and Fresno State.
That's the twenty five points that they scored against those
(08:36):
five teams to keep them from OH in twelve last year.
So those great Jimmy's and Joe's that they've been recruiting
for the last five years are track. They were very
bad last year. That is a very bad team. And
they lost that home to Indiana by thirty not to
usc to Indiana at home by thirty points, and almost
(09:03):
all of that team, the all of the experience that
could have been built upon to make them better this year,
to get a step forward and improvement is gone. They
return too offensive linemen, they return almost no wide receivers,
they return none of their running game. So the things
(09:23):
I was worried about for Utah the defensive line. They're
up against the very inexperienced offensive line with one good
transfer in sure, but it's gonna be young talented maybe,
but young inexperienced, the kind of thing that Morgan Scalley
and the Utah defensive line can take advantage of. And
the defense, the defense isn't gonna be a lot better
(09:46):
now I will say we're gonna see some familiar names.
We Utah fans are gonna see some familiar names. You know,
you see a Kafusi on this team. Anthony Woods transferred
to this team. We're gonna see some familiar names. But
UCLA lost three linebackers to the draft, two offensive lines
(10:06):
of the draft, secondary players to the draft. They lost
all these really super talented Jimmy's and Joe's and I
don't think they replaced them with as good of players
as the players that almost went that were three touchdowns
away from zero to twelve last year. So this is
a Utah team I think is pretty experienced, is gonna
be balanced on both sides of the ball. They've got
(10:28):
some holes, but this is a Utah team that if
they can't take care of what I expect to be
a pretty bad UCLA team, Utah fans are gonna be
in for a long season because this is another team
that misses a bowl game. If this game is a loss.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
So you guys are stats guys. What was UCLA's offensive
production with their quarterback last year?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
It was horrible. It was one of the worst.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, that's kind of go ahead, you're good I.
Speaker 5 (10:57):
Mean, Ethan Garber's never jumped off the page to me
as a great quarterback, but he was one of those
high recruits, you know, And that's where I don't always
go with the high rankings and that their athletes are
necessarily necessarily better than Utah's at this point, because you know,
when they have guys like Ethan Garber's, he was okay,
but you know when you have an offense like that.
(11:19):
They were, like in that offensive line one hundred and
twelfth in sacks last season, giving up thirty four sacks,
one hundred and twenty eighth in rushing offense with a
good running back. I thought, you know, it's only eighty
six yards a game on the ground. And I don't
think they're better. I think they've actually gotten worse. And
so that's where I feel really confident. And their defense
was kind of the They were a lot like Utah.
(11:39):
They had a top top fifty defense, and the defense
is what kind of kept him in those games, kept
him close. That defense, Yeah, especially with that linebacking group.
The one player that Whittingham talked about in his press
conference was on the defensive line, and that was Gary
Smith three, who's actually returning from injuries six years senior.
(12:01):
So the defensive line actually looks like they'll be pretty good.
But yeah, just as Dustin mentioned earlier, that's where Utah
strengthened is on the offensive line, and so they'll handle
that defensive line. You've got a secondary and in a
linebacking corps that's almost completely replaced by transfers. A couple
guys are going to have step up that were on
the team. But this is why I feel so confident
(12:22):
in a Utah big win, because I don't think the
defense will be able to hold up like it has
last year.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
I think I think there's a few parts of my
body that haven't been punched by by Matt.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
So I even you'd like to get a couple in. Yeah,
I have a couple down.
Speaker 4 (12:40):
You know it gets in. I want to get one
more in. I just checked the last four years of
recruiting ratings. Utah has outrecruited UCLA all four years.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
I was wonder, okay, so I am going to step
in between you guys, no more fighting. I think that
Utah will win this game. I think it's going to
come down to the fourth quarter, and Utah's five star
kicker is going to come out in the field and
(13:11):
drill a field goal. That's too far away from my
comfort personally, right, And I think that the thing that
worries me about this game and the reason it's going
to be closer than it should. We've talked about Utah's
defensive line and the struggles that they have with new
(13:35):
A lot of them are young, right. I watched Nico
play SEC football. That dude's dangerous. He's very dangerous. If
you give him time, he can drop dimes. Put that
on a shirt, put it on your pillowcase, and sleep
on it. I think Utah can do it, though. I
(13:58):
do think UCLA is going to be better than people
are going to give them credit for. That's my opinion
on this UCLA game so well.
Speaker 5 (14:07):
I mean, hearing all these things, I can see I
could see where it could go bad and where my
prediction could be really wrong because I could see, Yeah,
it's first game of the year, new offense, a lot
of new players playing in the Rose Bowl, and your
point against Nico is good when you play in the SEC.
There's no question the SEC is the best conference in
(14:29):
all of college football. I don't necessarily like the bottom
teams but the top teams are the best, and and
he did and and but I still I still have
to look at that and just see he's I mean,
his stats were horrendous when he played a top twenty
five team, And I guess it depends. But and I
(14:49):
don't know. I just feel like Morgan Scalley will dial
up the right stuff to keep the right pressure. And
I just I still feel completely comfortable and I'm not. Yeah,
I'm excited to meet with you guys next week and
talk about how right I was with a huge victory
and uh yeah, we'll just have to let's have to
wait for that.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
All I'll say is is Nico takes.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Matt.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
I sincerely hope that's the conversation that we're having. I
just I've just gotta do my job, which is a
switch play to just stab everybody's tires.
Speaker 4 (15:22):
We've got to have reality, all right, guys for us
friend us here tonight.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Everybody listening, Thank you for listening. We appreciate all of you.
Please like subscribe on any platform that you're listening on,
and thank you for listening. Again. From the bottom of
our hearts, everybody, I hope you have a good, great weekend.
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