Hustle Belt MACTracking: Kill 'Em At Home

An interesting weekend, wherein Miami showed they're just as mediocre as they appeared last weekend (the ACC makes no sense to me).

Minnesota found a way to beat an Iowa team they probably shouldn't have despite two ill-advised two-point conversion attempts.

Kansas...got their asses handed to them again. Let's all sit around the bonfire and discuss, shall we?

Kansas - Let's get this mess out of the way first. On their opening play from scrimmage, Jordan Webb completed a five yard pass to D.J. Bashears and then got lit up for a roughing the passer penalty. Twent yards of offense right there. The rest of the game the Jayhawks managed 16 yards of offense and two more first downs. Oh, and the defense gave up another 600 yards to Texas. Their best defensive effort to date was 420 yards and 24 points surrendered to FCS McNeese State. I literally have no idea how they beat Northern Illinois. If only they didn't have their bye six weeks ago so I could take a break from writing about this mess.

Miami - Third drive of the game, missed 40-yard field goal. Fourth drive of the game, Jacory Harris is sacked and fumbles at the Virginia 20. Next to last drive of the game, first-and-ten at the Virginia 23 becomes a turnover on downs. Tadah, the Hurricanes lose by a touchdown to a Virginia team that may/may not be better than them. Now they face a 3-5 Duke team - that has lost their last two by a combined four points.

Minnesota - Again, we saved the best for last. I'll be honest, I went into this game assuming that they were going to get embarrassed. They had lost four games in a row by an average score of 55-14, and that was including the loss to FCS North Dakota State. So what did they do this time? Well, they had a whole hell of a lot of luck. Iowa's offense had some very interesting decision making and poor execution.

Follow me on this path: Iowa went for it on fourth-and-six from Minnesota's 35 on their opening drive. Gained four yards. Their third offensive drive, they missed a 24-yard field goal. Their fourth drive, they missed a 43 yard field goal. On their last offensive drive, down one point with 2:48 and one timeout remaining, the Hawkeyes went incompletion, incompletion, incompletion, false start, quarterback draw. Yes, a quarterback draw on fourth-and-15 from their own 20.

Also, the Gophers fumbled three times and only lost one, plus the two-point conversions didn't kill them. Down 21-10, you don't need two-point conversions. Kick an extra point the first time, and then a second one guarantees Iowa needing a touchdown.

It's fair to say that for once, Minnesota won a game they likely should have lost (which I suppose makes up for the USC game in the opener). That does not, however, mean a whole lot to the big picture other than make it slightly less likely that they'll get crushed on the road at Michigan State next week. Or at home against Wisconsin the week after that. Oh well.