Pitt’s loss in Storrs last Thursday night blew the Big East crown chase wide open. The Panthers remain one game ahead of the completion, but four teams linger just behind them and the BE’s strategy of back loading the season’s best games appears to have setup well, regardless of the surprising results in the beginning of the year. I think the best way to breakdown the rest of the season is to formulate a few scenarios. For the purpose of exposing it from the best case scenario view of WVU fans, we are going to assume they win out by winning at Louisville and Pitt the next two weekends and at home versus Rutgers, which is by no means a small task. Charlie Strong’s Cardinals have been a tough out all year and certainly the Backyard Brawl is never easy, but that is the assumption we are going to go with. We will also assume the three teams with three losses, Cincy/Lville/Rutgers, are all out of the chase. The following scenarios are listed in order of preference for WVU’s sake.
Scenario A: Uconn beats Syracuse and loses to Cincy or USF. WVU would have tiebreakers over USF and Pitt.
Scenario B: South Florida wins out and Uconn beats Syracuse. WVU takes head to head over USF. If Syracuse beats Uconn in this scenario, they take the win.
Scenario C: Syracuse wins out, forcing a three way tie with WVU and Pitt. A three way mini conference would not resolve the tie, which tosses it up to BCS rankings. WVU would likely take advantage of national perception, a four game win streak and stronger computer numbers to likely win the tiebreakers.
Scenario D: Uconn wins out, they get the crown no matter what we or Pitt do. Probably the most unlikely as they have ‘Cuse, Cincy, and USF left with the first and latter on the road.
Now lets look at the most important games left in the Big East season:
1) WVU @ Pitt: Backyard Braw would probably produce only likely champion that could contend in BCS.
2) Uconn @ Syracuse: Beyond being rivals, this game plays a lot of importance in how the previous scenarios finish out. Both teams have a lot of things going their way as long as Pitt gets beat again.
3) Pitt @ USF: Typically a good game and should be a tough matchup.
4) Uconn @ USF: As you see, South Florida plays the top stakeholders at home, making their season conclusion very important.
5) WVU @ Louisville: Toughest game of the title contenders versus a non-title contender, just edging out the follow up to last year’s track meet between Cincy and Pitt, which has lost considerable luster.
Syracuse and USF can also salvage a little bit of Big East respect going into bowl season by beating a couple BCS teams in Boston College and Miami. It would also be a nice jab at the ACC; I would bet on Syracuse to pull it out and a close USF loss in Joe Robbie.
No comments:
Post a Comment