The last few weeks were terrible weeks for “Cinderella” teams and the amount of losses for them was not good, so I’ll be going over what happened to these “Cinderella” teams.
First off we’ll start with a light one which would be Clemson. Clemson was looking really strong with their only loss being to the Georgia Bulldogs. They were facing an okay looking Louisville team who was 5-3 at the time with losses to Miami, SMU, and Notre Dame. The game was actually almost always in hand after the Cardinals went up 17-7 at the end of the 2nd quarter. The game’s stats are very interesting because Clemson led or tied in almost every single statistical category besides yards per play, penalty yards, and punts. The only problem is that those stats came along with 42 more plays than Louisville. In the end it shows that Clemson wasn’t as good as we thought them to be.
Next we have Navy who had already lost to Notre Dame, but was still looking really good. They were to play Rice after their loss to Notre Dame, and Rice is currently 3-7 meaning they went into that game with a 2-6 record, but Navy went down by 14 in the 1st quarter and never rebounded. Rice would put up 84 more total yards than Navy, 239 passing yards, and averaged 5.3 yards per play. Navy did lead in rushing yards, but they typically run more than most teams.
Now we have Pitt and SMU, in which Pitt would be undefeated leading up to the game. SMU still looked strong with only one loss, which would be to a strong BYU team. Both offenses looked really strong in the game both putting up more than 450 yards. Though Pitt’s problem would be 2 turnovers and 2 turnover on downs. The biggest difference in the game would be SMU getting 7 yards per play, while Pitt only averaged 5 yards per play.
Next is Miami and Georgia Tech, which Miami was coming off a strong season, while Georgia Tech was doing decent, and sort of stumbled through a few games. In the game Miami put up 66 more total yards than Georgia Tech, and had 348 yards through the air compared to Georgia Tech’s measly 99 passing yards. Miami had an extremely poor game on the ground though only racking up 88 rushing yards, while Georgia Tech put up an astonishing 271 yards. The biggest blow to Miami would be their lack of converting in big moments, like being 1 for 4 on 4th downs and being 3 for 10 on 3rd downs, and they also had 1 fumble, where as Georgia Tech had no turnovers.
Lastly we have the most upsetting one on this list to me, which is Army and Notre Dame. Like Navy, Army would be totally outmatched as athletes, as they would allow 462 total yards, 189 passing yards, 273 rushing yards, and 9.8 yards per play. They would not throw a ton, which is typical Army, but they only had 26 passing yards, 207 rushing yards, and averaged 3.5 yards per play.
College football keeps getting crazier and crazier, and the season still is far from over, and the season may still be full of surprises.