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Let’s Build An Offense Part 1: Building A Base

Posted by ChrisApplewhite on February 5th, 2008 under Football

There is an age old debate on the Longhorn interwebs, ten years old at this point. One man, a renegade, will exclaim dissatisfaction with our offense. Another man, an august guardian, will tell that man that if he is so smart, why don’t you do better? Point taken, sir. I can’t actually do anything, but I can show you how I would build our 2008 offense, step by step.

I believe in John Wooden’s pyramid of success. The concept is simple: the road to competitive success is built upon building blocks, one on top of the other. You can’t go to the next level without first mastering the basics. His basics are attitudes, mine are personnel. To wit:

Step 1: Who is your QB? – This is the most important question you can ask yourself. What can you get out of the one person who has the ball in his hands every play? Every offense is defined by its signal caller. I have to decide who to put out there and what to put around him.

What I want (and remember, this is not what I think will happen, or even what should happen. This is all me and my preferences) is maximum flexibility. I want to be able to hit any part of the field at anytime. I want to be able to produce big plays on the ground. Finally, I want to be able to run the football late in games when I have a lead. At Texas, this is a common occurrence, and possibly the single hardest thing to do in the game.

So with that in mind, which QB gives us the best chance at achieving these goals? Colt gives us the edge in big plays through the air (the ones not by design, anyway), and the safety net of the short passing game. Chiles gives us explosiveness in all facets and the unpredictability that is impossible to game plan against. If my goal is to be able to strike big on the ground and run with a lead, Chiles has to be my guy (personal bias towards running QBs alert!). We don’t have the precision passing necessary to rely on the short passing game, but hopefully we can get the 5-8 yard gains on the power of Chiles’ legs.

Step 2: It’s 3rd and 3. What do you do? – Every offense has to specialize in something. If you have an expertise, something you can count on even when the defense is ready for it, then not only do you have something your players are comfortable with to fall back on when the stakes rise, but you can also hit for big plays off of counters for whatever it is you do. For example, when Ricky was here, we hand the ball to him and let him do his thing while Major Applewhite took easy 10-20 yarders over 9 man fronts. When Vince was here, same deal, except better since he was his own running back. Think back to all the bad offenses we’ve had here, 2000-2002, 2006: these were all offenses that didn’t have that safety net. There was nothing those teams did well. As a result, Mack whined about not having identity and we lost to Stanford. Knowing yourself matters.

What about this past season? We started out identity-less, just like last year. On 3rd and 3 we couldn’t run, so we’d pass, and let Colt run around until something opened up. Hardly a reliable stratagem. It’s wasn’t until Colt got hurt against Nebraska (thankfully) that we found ourselves, having to put in Chiles and run the zone read. We went 75 yards in 3 plays and the rest is history. We still lost to A&M because our defense was embarrassingly bad, but the offense was OK. We had an identity, albeit one that we stumbled on thanks to the benevolent injury Gods.

Before last season I was in favor of putting Colt in charge of a Mike Shanahan-style, power zone blocking, short passing offense that took advantage of our experience with the blocking scheme and the strengths of the QB. Now, we kind of have to throw that out because of Chiles being the QB. Running QBs + west coastish offenses don’t work. When these running QBs are in high school, there isn’t a huge emphasis on quick drops, quick decisions, and accurate throws. When they do throw, it’s usually over stacked fronts, and if nothing comes open quickly, they can run around until someone pops open. This is why trying to teach this stuff to a running QB at the pro level rarely works out well.

So as conventional wisdom goes, if you’re going to focus on one mode of attack (for us, the run), then you had better have a bunch of ways to attack, or opponents will shut you down regardless of how much more talent you have. This is where the spread option suits us really well. We can:

  • a) continue to use the zone blocking schemes we’ve used for the last 3-4 years. This speaks for itself. Everyone knows what zone blocking looks like at this point.
  • b) eliminate the obsolete fullback position and replace it with an actual weapon. This is one of the hidden benefits of spreading the option. Used to be if you wanted a dive option, it had to be a big back capable of grinding yardage in between the tackles. Some schools still use a bigger interior option, like A&M and WVU with Javorskie Lane and Owen Schmidt, respectively. It’s possible, though, to simply add an option to the zone read, meaning you can run a zone play one way with the option the other way. The zone is designed to naturally expand running holes without committing to one specifically, and if we space our OL out like Missouri or Tech do, then you can create a lot of space for a quicker, speedier back who can actually threaten the defense with big plays.
  • c) to continue to use the quick read screens we’ve used for years to help keep defenses off our backs. Since we are relying on formations creating space instead of power, you can remove a FB or TE from the formation and split them, creating screening opportunities wide. Don’t be fooled, they go into the books as a pass, but whenever we do this it’s no more than a run with a WR getting the carry. Now we can quickly strike anywhere along the line of scrimmage (LOS) and get a quick 4-5 yards wherever the defense sleeps on us, or the LB gets a little too aggressive.

wr-screen.gif

  • d) more easily exploit athletic mismatches in the open field – similar deal to the screen game, since our attack is now based on finding where the defense is softest, we can easily get the ball to our playmakers (if we have any left, that is) in space against one opponent. Break one tackle and big plays await. There will be more examples of this throughout the series.

Step 3: OK, you got your QB . . . now what about everyone else? – For the OL, I’d just let their position coach pick the 5 best. He knows better than I do, probably (for the record, I would go with Allen-McGuasky-Burnette-Huey-Hix. I like talent over experience, generally). Besides, the fun part is picking the skill players.

In our offense, flexibility is the word of the day. Not just individually, but I want to be able to move guys around, and have the ability to do almost anything out of our base personnel sets. This means, for the most part, picking versatile players, so let’s focus on what positions we want on the field, in our base set.

When making such important decisions, it’s crucial to know what your goal is. For us, it’ll be variation in the running game. For Greg Davis, I’m not sure he goes through the process at all. The AAS writes their fluff piece every year about the extensive staff meetings claiming they do, but nothing ever materializes from it. Do you mean to tell me, Austin American Statesman, that Davis and Brown sat down and decided to just put Colt in the same offense Vince ran? And they thought this would work? Good thing for Davis that this isn’t a democracy, because Barack Obama would have his job by now.

Anyhow, like I said, the priority for us is good old new option football. This means we need two backs in the backfield, and the way we’ll run it, we need two good backs that can both pick up 5 yards through the mess of zone play and get yardage outside on option pitches, etc. We have one guy for sure, in Vondrell McGee. The second will take some conjecture based on very limited knowledge. Here is the depth chart of the other scholarship players at RB:

  • Antwan Cobb – Nah.
  • Chris Ogboy . . . Obgbaya . . . Chris O. – Looked slow to end the season. Used to have at least some burst to turn the corner. Probably not a realistic option, although he is a good pass blocker.
  • Cody Johnson – Maybe. I have no idea how good he is. He would fill the role of the heavy pretty well, should he pan out. He has those soft feet that Henry Melton and Ivan Williams had, so that worries me.
  • Fozzy Whitaker – I like him a lot. Very quick, strong for his size, can really thrive in this type of offense. Was very good in The Last King of Scotland.
  • Jeremy Hills/Tre Newton/Darrell Scott – Hills I like for his speed, Newton is the best receiving threat of the entire group, and Scott would bring a big punch of the offense. Because they are freshman, there is no way to know exactly how good they are just yet. Regardless of what we think of them now, they can’t be relied on. Plus Scott may be playing for CU, unless they can’t match our offer of being a better situation in every way.

So based on this list, let’s just assume that Whitaker is the 2nd back, with Cody Johnson and Chris O. coming in situationally, for power and protection respectively. McGee is almost certainly a tougher runner inside, with his Emmitt Smith-like ability to eke out yardage with his quickness and low center of gravity. So this is what we have so far:

base-runners.gif

Scribblings show the start of the base package, a zone read option type deal, color coded for convenience. Black is the zone read half, green the option. The OL was made to have wider splits than normal (it doesn’t really show), as well, to open some running lanes inside. McGee defaults to the zone side since he has shown he can operate in tight quarters. Whitaker is a smaller back so some more specific preparations will need to be made for him.

Obviously, we’ll have at least two WRs, and for now those two are Quan Cosby and Jordan Shipley, on account of them being the only ones on the roster who have ever played before. So that leaves us with one position left, and we get to decide between a slot receiver and tight end.

It’s doesn’t matter which we choose since you can sub so liberally, and it isn’t really difficult to install packages for both personnel groupings. But since both packages have advantages, lets take a quick look.

The tight end would almost assuredly be Blaine Irby. He hasn’t played much but he looks like a fluid athlete in the same build as our last couple TEs, athletic and slender. Because of his body type I wouldn’t want him on the formation blocking ends and stuff, so I’d split him out. In the slot he would be blocking coverage LBs and safeties, giving us an advantage, potentially, based on matchups. LBs who can cover and Ss who can beat good run blocking are pretty rare, especially at places like Baylor and A&M. Irby could potentially be the matchup nightmare than Finely was, although I don’t expect him to he quite that good.

Having a third WR gives us another pass option, obviously, and depending on who it is, a much needed deep threat. But there are two problems. One, we have absolutely no clue if any of the reserve WRs are any good, and two, it presents problems run blocking. We could run more WR screens or short passes if they choose to walk a LB out, but if Chiles is our QB, I’d rather always have the option to run than having to rely on the passing game at all.

Also, since our backs are nice and quick, we can motion one into the slot, or even out wide, and not lose much, depending on the skill of the back. Point being, I don’t think we lose much from the passing game if we use Irby. Our focus is the run game, too, so having added bulk for run blocking is a big plus. So a split out TE is our 11th player, give us the following base look:

base-offense.gif

The main problem we’ll have is trying to get guys deep, since we’ll have three possession receivers and two RBs. There are ways around that though.

Hopefully this has been somewhat enlightening on the thought process of building an offense, and somewhat enlightening on how badly our staff does it. Offenses have to mesh, with every piece going towards a bigger goal. “Coach” Davis seems to want to fit a bunch of random pieces together and hope for the best. They put more thought into making boy bands than we do our run game.

Coming in Part 2 – Basic plays installed, and counters for the looks defenses would give us.

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15 Responses

  1. TaylorTRoom said:

    February 4th, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    Designing an offense is a strategic decision as much as a tactical decision. The good thing about the offense you’re designing is that the talent it needs to operate successfully (mobile QB, big WRs who can block, athletic OL) is in plentiful supply in Texas. This is opposed to the kind of offense a fool would design, that only works with an NFL arm at QB and 1st round pick-quality left tackles.

  2. BigSatan said:

    February 4th, 2008 at 1:03 pm

    Aww, it’s over already?

  3. GDGD said:

    February 4th, 2008 at 1:18 pm

    ———————————————
    Irby could potentially be the matchup nightmare than Finely was, although I don’t expect him to he quite that good.
    ——————————————-

    Har! We only ran the “TE eligible receiver” play 3 times all season.
    Antonio Gates would total 4 receptions for 20 yards with my playcalling.

  4. Greg Davis said:

    February 4th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    I would make Colt McCoy the slot receiver. I really think it adds something having him in there as a pass catcher when John Chiles is under center.

  5. Kafka said:

    February 5th, 2008 at 9:49 am

    Good stuff. I like using Irby split out. Gives you a wideout who can block well, fight for the 50-50 ball, and makes it much easier for Irby to get off the line of scrimmage. Mizzou did this with great success with their tight ends this past season.

    Conventional wisdom is that wide spacing of the line (like Tech does) is possible because Big 12 referees are tolerant of holding. Do you keep the same wide splits in the bowl game when holding is less tolerated? If not, what other adjustments have to be made to the scheme when less holding is tolerated by non Big 12 refs?

    The offense needs at least one tall wide receiver who can run fast and is great on 50-50 balls (i.e. like Finley was his redshirt freshman year). That is not Cosby (not tall or super fast anymore) or Shipley (not real tall and fights poorly for the 50-50 ball).

    Do you really need that second running back in the backfield if you have Chiles at QB? Urban Meyer typically has his running back (which is actually probably a wide receiver in motion) running hard in one direction and the QB is going the opposite direction (so there is misdirection to freeze the D). A second running back is great for picking up blitzes but I am guessing you will not having chiles standing immobile in the pocket for long periods very much.

    The emphasis on flexibility is great so why not rely less on classic wide receivers and put running back or tight end (leaner, faster variety) type or really big wide receiver type out wide? The running back types can block better than a wide receiver and are much better at YAC on short passes (short passes will be important for Chiles). The lean, fast tight end types (or really big wide receiver type is cool, too)split out wide are better than small wide receivers at hanging onto the ball across the middle, are a bigger target, much better at fighting for the 50-50 ball anywhere and are much better at blocking.

    In the new offense you want wide outs who can block an LB (to facilitate the running game) and the typical classical wide receiver can not do that (Cosby probably would succeed more than expected because of his guts but you should not ask him to block an LB and Shipley would get hurt).

    The wideouts need to be optimized for the short passing game (i.e. either good blockers who are great at YAC or great blockers who are great at catching the ball in traffic).

    The OL needs to be fast (not huge) for down field blocking and screens.

  6. ChrisApplewhite said:

    February 5th, 2008 at 1:13 pm

    “Conventional wisdom is that wide spacing of the line (like Tech does) is . . .what other adjustments have to be made to the scheme when less holding is tolerated by non Big 12 refs?”

    Good point. It’s always fun watching OU hold its way to a Big 12 championship then get destroyed in a bowl game. Loadholt won’t be going pro thanks 100% to Johnny Dingle. The advantage we’ll have is that in zone blocking, it isn’t necessary to dominate your opponent. If he wants to run by, let him, and use his own momentum to push him out of the way. That opens up a gap that, hopefully, the RB sees.

    “The offense needs at least one tall wide receiver”

    Agreed. We don’t really “need” it but it would make us a ton better. This is where we’ll have to rely on freshman like Malcolm Williams. Someone is going to have to step up.

    “Do you really need that second running back in the backfield”

    In this case, yes. The emphasis is on running the option with a not-so-polished passer. We need as many options back there as possible. Meyer’s offenses and typically had a west coast passing scheme attached to it and didn’t rely so heavily on the run, until this year. There will still be plenty of motioning out of the backfield, though. This is just a base set.

    “The emphasis on flexibility is great so why not rely less on classic wide receivers and put running back or tight end (leaner, faster variety) type or really big wide receiver type out wide?”

    I would, if we had any. Shipley and Cosby are the only two any of us have seen play, so they pretty much have to start.

  7. Kafka said:

    February 5th, 2008 at 7:36 pm

    It looks like we’re proposing quite similar but not identical offenses (and that’s OK).

    My concept is that I would like to be able for the wideouts to do the following on both the left and right side:
    * block LBs
    * run screens effectively
    * present a big target for quick slants up the middle and catch the ball reliably despite getting hit hard
    * get YAC dependably
    * win 50-50 balls

    To block LBs, present a big target for quick slants up the middle and catch the ball reliably despite getting hit hard, and win 50-50 balls, you need a big guy (the tight end or really big wide receiver part of the two man combo).

    To run explosively and get YAC, you need a running back type. This guy might also be able to block an LB in space.

    My idea is that the best way to meet these requirements is to pair up an explosive RB type (such as V. McGee) out wide with a big receiver (such as Irby) on each sides. I don’t know who the best personnel choices would be but I’m pretty sure that Texas enough running backs and big wide receivers in the recent classes to put good people on the field to fill these positions.

    The reason these requirements are so important is that you have to expect a drop off in passing skill when you replace a pro style QB with a dual purpose QB, so the offense (and the personnel) has to be changed to accomodate this change. Specifically the QB needs to mainly make more short throws (just raise up and throw immediately) that are easy for him to execute. This means that screens have to actually work. This means lots of YAC (i.e. RB types who can explode after they catch the ball). This means that quick slants have to be to guys who are big targets, can catch the ball in traffic, and take a hit (i.e. your traditional tight end or really big wide receiver type type).

    When the QB throws long, he needs for the deep receiver to be able to win 50-50 balls (or at least prevent interceptions), this requires a tall jumper who has rebounding skills. The dual purpose QB will get lots of opportunites to throw deep into single coverage (because the D will have to focus on defending the run and short passing game) but it is likely that the dual purpose QB is going to throw less accurately deeply so the deep receiver is going to have to get up in the air and fight for it.

    Cosby is short and Shipley is not good at fighting for 50-50 balls. Guys like Shipley (and to a lesser extent, Cosby) are not really ideal for any of these capabilities. They are optimized for an offense where the patterns take a while to develop and the wide receivers run precise patterns and catch well. In a spread offense, you have to assume that the passes are going to be shorter (usually) and thrown right away (because you are more vulnerable to a blitz with wider line spacing). The wide receivers also need to be powerful guys who are excellent blockers to spport the running game.

    Texas has not run screens well because they don’t have explosive guys running the ball and the wide receivers don’t block that great (they block well for wide receivers but your classic wide receiver just does not block that well compared to a tight end type). If you have big, excellent blocker (the tight end type or a really big wide receiver) blocking for the explosive guy, the screens are going to be much more effective than was the case previously for UT.

    Misdirection:
    by having only the QB and the TB in the backfield, you can have a RB/TE (type guys) split out wide on both sides. This means you can run effective screens to either side of the field (a big plus). You lose this capability if you put two RBs in the backfield (in addition to the QB).

    You should get plenty of misdirection if the TB and QB are moving in opposite directions (QB to the right, TB to the left, for example). That should be enough to freeze the LBs and run support DBs for a second or two. If you need more misdirection, you can put in motion one of the RB type guys that are split out wide.

    Offensive Line:
    In addition to optimizing the wideouts for the spread formation offense that runs a bunch, you also have to optimize the OL. There is less need to open holes because of the wide spacing in the line and much more need for guys who can get block downfield or block for screens and other short passes. This requires speed. The OL needs to get leaner and faster (think DE types) and more athletic to block in space.

    Basically what I am proposing is a combination of Urban Meyer does in Florida with Percy Harvin and what Mizzou does with their big tight ends (split out wide) and what USC does splitting out their TBs as wide receivers (and, of course, what Rich Rodriguez did at WV).

    Sorry for the long post, the personnel and strategic changes necessary to properly support the spread offense are interesting to me.

  8. ChrisApplewhite said:

    February 5th, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    Well, let me just say that there is nothing that you suggest that I won’t or wouldn’t consider. Like I said, this is a root that will branch off into other things. I’ll have RBs in the slot. I’ll motion guys around. We’ll run plenty of one back stuff.

    It’s just a matter of taking it step by step and really thinking about every little detail as it pertains to this team. For instance, you say you want a big deep threat, but we don’t have that right now. We have some freshman who could fill that role, but we don’t know yet.

    I’m trying to be very realistic about this, in part because Davis seems to do whatever he wants without considering the players running the offense. If we build the offense around tall WRs who can get downfield, yet we don’t have any, where does that leave us? On a team with so few known quantities, we really have to be safe.

  9. doog said:

    February 6th, 2008 at 7:44 am

    Excellent work. Can’t wait for part 2 of the series.
    Only question: Being able to run is obviously important in certain situations. Do you think there is an advantage to running out of the I formation vs running out of the shotgun?

    And I mean when trying to run between the tackles. if its the 4th quarter then running sideline to sideline might be harmful.

  10. DrkBgrk said:

    February 6th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

    sure is nice to see some football being discussed again.

  11. ChrisApplewhite said:

    February 7th, 2008 at 8:12 am

    doog: Running out of heavier sets is safer, but also less productive. That’s really letting the defense off the hook, I think.

    I would much rather risk a zone play getting stretched out too far than run out of the I, especially when we don’t really have a great FB or TE to help block.

    I want to make the defense work on every play. If it’s late in the game and we have a lead, continuing to grind yardage is demoralizing. I want to keep it open without risking too much, if possible.

  12. doog said:

    February 7th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    Cool. Can you run traditional counters, traps, etc out of the ‘gun? Or is it more of the VY/Tim Tebow sort of zone reads and QB draws?

    I dont know anything about offenses so this is new to me. I used to just watch and see that the offense either worked or didn’t. Which makes me as qualified as Greg Davis.

  13. ChrisApplewhite said:

    February 7th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    Absolutely, in fact we do run a shotgun counter frequently.

    You can pretty much do anything about of any formation if you’re creative, it’s why I have a disdain for labels like ‘the spread’ or whatever. You’re only defined by what you want to do, nothing else.

  14. Kafka said:

    February 7th, 2008 at 9:50 pm

    We saw what happened last year when Sweed went down. You need somebody who can draw a double team or the safety is free to do nasty things like blitz and run support, etc. On deep balls both colt and chiles will need someone big (like a rebounder) who knows how to fight for 50-50 balls. It was so painful seeing DBs outfight Shipley for the 50-50 ball.

    For one big WO, you can use Irby (as you already proposed). for the other side, we have several big WOs (just signed buckman and grant, for example. BTW, I heard that ESPN reclassified Grant as a 5 star). My guess is that one of those highly ranked big, young WOs is going to be good enough. We absolutely need at least one real tall guy who can go deep and win 50-50 balls. We need to play these guys as much as possible in the blowout games early in the season to see who can deliver.

    GD understands football theory fine (I think) and is a student of the game. I do wonder about how well he gets matchups and how well he puts his personnel in a position to succeed (i.e. has them do stuff that they do well).

  15. ChrisApplewhite said:

    February 7th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

    If Greg Davis sat and talked to you about his offense, you would probably walk away satisfied that he is a capable playcaller.

    The problem isn’t his chalkboard skills, it’s that he doesn’t understand that defenses won’t stand still and line up the way he draws them. He doesn’t understand that football isn’t played in a vacuum, that if you run one play over and over, no matter how good it is, the defense is going to adjust and stop it. It’s not the x’s and o’s that get him, it’s that he calls plays like he’s playing a video game.

    And some WR is going to step up. We have too many good ones to not have it happen. Malcolm Williams and Brandon Collins are both very good, and should be a factor. We still have Montre Webber, who I really like. He’s got natural talent and can get open deep, but is still raw I guess. Buckner and Hales could be factors, and I think Grant is too raw right now. This kid was a DE last year.

    Something will happen there but my philosophy is to build around your known quantities and let any freshmen be pleasant surprises. When you rely on them, you’re in trouble.

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    What happens when a stoppable force meets a movable object?

    We’ll find out on March 18th. Meet Wake Forest.

    This game will be watching drunks trying to brawl. Neither belligerent will land a punch, and it will be viewed by both fanbases with equal measures of horror, embarassment, and amusement.

  • skymonkeyhorn commented on the blog post Texas Basketball is Dangerous   8 hours, 41 minutes ago

    Some one sent this quote from the Dallas Mornong News to me.
    “I’ve had teams in the past that were just where we are right now mentally. And we got it turned around. I had a team in the exact same situation, and we ended up going to the Sweet 16 and ended up losing

  • I.M. Hipp commented on the blog post Castille Day   9 hours, 3 minutes ago

    He really screwed himself. We probably would have won two more games with him. He was more worried about the “devil’s lettuce” than developing into a solid back. Pathetic.

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  • Kevin Berger commented on the blog post React-to-Ology: Early Look at the Madness   9 hours, 22 minutes ago

    dick, thanks for the heads up on the east bracket. In my haste to get the post up I had a brain cramp on the bracket.

    As for KU, when you compare their bracket to Syracuse you have to scratch your head. Even Self mentioned as much.

    Scooby, you’re probably right about the 8/9.

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  • skymonkeyhorn commented on the blog post Texas Basketball is Dangerous   9 hours, 30 minutes ago

    I have been thinking that the team quit on Barnes some time during the last 14-15 games.
    My brother in Michigan thought the the team fell apart after the 11-12th game of the season I think that it was atm @CC game.
    I wonder if Barnes has health issues, he just looks bad on TV and

  • dick commented on the blog post NCAA Basketball Tournament Lines   9 hours, 39 minutes ago

    Marquette line really surprises me. I like Washington and normally I would be impressed with a conference tourney winner but that falls under the Pac 10 sucks rule to me. I would have liked to see Washington lined up against a different 6 seed.

  • Farmer Ted commented on the blog post Quick Bracket Thoughts   9 hours, 40 minutes ago

    Call me crazy but I would prefer to face OSU over any of the other three 2 seeds. They basically lost to Michigan (who truly sucks) on Friday, played Illinois even yesterday and beat an exhausted Minnesota team today. They aren’t exactly on fire. As for the other #2’s, I have no interest in playing

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  • Trips Right commented on the blog post Texas Basketball is Dangerous   9 hours, 49 minutes ago

    sky, it’s pretty crazy really. Barnes sounds like he’s mailing it in at this point.

  • whiskey commented on the blog post NFL Draft: A Mockery   9 hours, 50 minutes ago

    Good discussion. The perception of Clausen is interesting. He might surprise you. Tate is a player that will contribute wherever he ends up. He’s serious.

  • Trips Right commented on the blog post Early NCAA Tournament Bets   9 hours, 53 minutes ago

    Utah State can really shoot it. They’re the top 3 point shooting team in America. But they struggle against quicker athletes and can be banged inside. the big 12 isn’t getting a lot of credit so the line is short, imo

  • skymonkeyhorn commented on the blog post Texas Basketball is Dangerous   9 hours, 54 minutes ago

    Is it just me or is Damo sounding a lot like Ricky?
    Are they just providing some giggles for the rest of the teams? Or do they think this shit will fly even with the blue hairs ?
    Will rick ever live down the quotes that will be recorded in Scipio vast mental vaults

  • Trips Right commented on the blog post NCAA Basketball Tournament Lines   10 hours, 3 minutes ago

    I posted my picks, but as you stated Richmond looks like easy money.

    I think Purdue is a shell and Siena is experienced, athletic and talented. Saints roll.

    I’m fading Gonzaga and St Mary’s. Zero athletes on those clubs.

    I”m also fading Michigan State with NMSU. They’ll be able to get shots against

  • dick commented on the blog post NCAA Basketball Tournament Lines   10 hours, 8 minutes ago

    I like UTEP and Wake to add to Trips bets, which I support fully.

    Richmond = 4 units
    Siena = 3 units

  • dick commented on the blog post NCAA Basketball Tournament Lines   10 hours, 9 minutes ago

    Just to try and keep it on the same thread, Trips likes:

    New Mexico -9
    Baylor -12
    Louisville pk
    Aggs -2
    Richmond pk
    NM St +12
    Siena +4
    FSU -1.5

  • Hiphopopotamus commented on the blog post Two Down, One To Go   10 hours, 11 minutes ago

    Always interested…good stuff all around.

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  • dick commented on the blog post Early NCAA Tournament Bets   10 hours, 14 minutes ago

    Love Siena, love Richmond, love Louisville. Why is the ags line so small? I’ll take them but that line scares me a bit. Seems like a sucker bet maybe.