I try to be careful around statistics, because I don’t believe much in them when it comes to sports. “Stats are for losers,” says the iconic and legend among mere mortals Bill Belichick. It tends to be more about matchups than statistics, and statistics come out through some of the matchups won and lost.
When it comes to the Big Ten Championship this weekend, which is ostensibly, a playoff game to get to the playoffs, there are matchups, mostly in units, that will emerge as key cogs in deciding who wins. These are three that may or may not be totally worth looking at. If they end up being reasons for the win or the loss, they were completely worth looking at, obviously.
Iowa’s Red Zone offense vs. Michigan State’s Red Zone defense
This is where statistics are sort of stupid. Sparty is 83rd in the nation in red zone defense. The problem with that is, getting there isn’t overly easy to do on them. That said, the Spartans are just about even across the board in what you’re going to get when you go in there, giving up 13 rushing scores, 10 passing, and 7 field goals. Iowa, on the other hand, is 37th in the country in RZ offense, relying heavily on the running game to make that work. Of their 43 scores, 28 are on the ground, 7 are in the air, and 8 are field goals. In other words, if MSU let’s Iowa creep inside the 20 and they can stop the run, the Hawkeyes will find tough sledding trying to come out with more points on the board more likely than not.
Michigan State on third down
In a lot of ways, MSU is the pretty girl who dresses down all week until Friday night, and then the cutoff jeans come out replacing the sweatpants. They’re one of only seven teams in the nation that boasts over a 50 percent conversion rate on third downs. Look, both Iowa and MSU are good. Odds are it won’t be a blowout, and odds are you’ll need to convert some of those. Iowa isn’t bad. But they’re not as good as MSU on the money down. Both teams are around 40th in the nation in stopping third downs, so it’ll be up to Iowa to decipher what MSU is going to do when they absolutely need a third down conversion, because surely they’ll have something cooked up, it seems. Seriously, no pun intended.
The big defensive play
Predictably, both Iowa and MSU are pretty darned good at figuring out ways to force screw ups by the opposing offenses. The caveat is that they’re also able to turn those into large plays. MSU is top 10 in the nation in defensive touchdowns with five and Iowa is right behind with four. MSU splits them up pretty evenly, with three fumble recoveries for touchdowns. All of Iowa’s scores are through the air. Odds are, turnovers are going to happen. Both of these teams are damn good at making sure more of them happen for you than they give up. Winning teams usually do that. The kicker is, when those turnovers happen, can they be kept from hemorrhaging chances at winning, or will they be the backbreaker that loses the game?
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