Monthly Archives: December 2011

The career stat lists on CougarStats do not include bowl game stats for players prior to 2002, the year that the NCAA started including bowl games in their official stats. For a long time, I’ve wondered how much of a disadvantage this gives the older players. Would it make much of a difference in the top 10 rankings if pre-2002 bowl statistics were included?

For passing and rushing leaders, the bowls make no difference. The top ten is unchanged. For scoring and receiving, the leaders would change.

RECEIVING

Dennis Pitta is BYU’s all-time leader in receptions with 221. 15 of those catches were in bowl games. Matt Bellini is third with 204. If Bellini’s 24 bowl game receptions were included in his career totals, he would take over the top spot with 228.

Official receiving leaders:

1	Pitta, Dennis	221
2	Collie, Austin	215
3	Bellini, Matt	204
4	Hooks, Margin	189
5	Odle, Phil	183
6	Hudson, Gordon	178
7	Mahe, Reno	166
8	Drage, Eric	162
9	Brown, Curtis	157
10	Christensen, Todd	152

—

Receiving leaders with pre-2002 bowl games included:

1	Bellini, Matt	228
2	Pitta, Dennis	221
3	Collie, Austin	215
4	Drage, Eric	195
5	Hooks, Margin	194
6	Hudson, Gordon	192
7	Odle, Phil	183
8	Mahe, Reno	173
9	Heimuli, Lakei	161
10	Christensen, Todd	160

—

If the NCAA did not change the rule in 2002 and no bowl game stats were included, Pitta would still be #1, but Bellini would hold the second place spot ahead of Austin Collie.

Receiving leaders with no bowl game stats:

1	Pitta, Dennis	206
2	Bellini, Matt	204
3	Collie, Austin	198
4	Hooks, Margin	189
5	Odle, Phil	183
6	Hudson, Gordon	178
7	Mahe, Reno	166
8	Drage, Eric	162
9	Christensen, Todd	152
10	Bellini, Mark	146

——

RECEIVING YARDS

Austin Collie officially has the most receiving yards in BYU history and if pre-2002 bowl stats were included he would still hold the title. However, Eric Drage has more yards in regular season games.

Official receiving yards leaders:

1	Collie, Austin	3,255
2	Drage, Eric	3,065
3	Pitta, Dennis	2,883
4	Hooks, Margin	2,841
5	Bellini, Matt	2,635
6	Odle, Phil	2,548
7	Hudson, Gordon	2,484
8	Bellini, Mark	2,429
9	Smith, Chris	2,367
10	Kozlowski, Glen	2,223

—

Receiving yards leaders with pre-2002 bowl games included:

1	Collie, Austin	3,255
2	Drage, Eric	3,227
3	Hooks, Margin	2,953
4	Pitta, Dennis	2,883
5	Bellini, Matt	2,868
6	Hudson, Gordon	2,600
7	Bellini, Mark	2,600
8	Odle, Phil	2,548
9	Smith, Chris	2,463
10	Kozlowski, Glen	2,330

—

Receiving yards leaders with no bowl game stats:

1	Drage, Eric	3,065
2	Collie, Austin	3,029
3	Hooks, Margin	2,841
4	Pitta, Dennis	2,742
5	Bellini, Matt	2,635
6	Odle, Phil	2,548
7	Hudson, Gordon	2,484
8	Bellini, Mark	2,429
9	Smith, Chris	2,367
10	Kozlowski, Glen	2,223

—

POINTS SCORED

The biggest loser in this little experiment is Mitch Payne, bless his heart. In the official stats Payne leads Owen Pochman by a single point. If you add Pochman’s bowl stats, he takes over #1 with 341 points. If you take away Mitch’s bowl stats, he gets passed by Pochman and Mitch’s big brother Matt.

Official scoring leaders:

1	Payne, Mitch	334
2	Pochman, Owen	333
3	Payne, Matt	312
4	Staley, Luke	290
5	Unga, Harvey	266
6	Gunther, Kurt	243
7	Willis, Jamal	240
8	Brown, Curtis	218
9	Hamilton, Waymon	192
10	Heimuli, Lakei	192

—

Scoring leaders with pre-2002 bowl games included:

1	Pochman, Owen	341
2	Payne, Mitch	334
3	Payne, Matt	316
4	Staley, Luke	290
5	Unga, Harvey	266
6	Gunther, Kurt	258
7	Willis, Jamal	252
8	Brown, Curtis	236
9	Hamilton, Waymon	198
10	Heimuli, Lakei	192

—

Scoring leaders with no bowl game stats:

1	Pochman, Owen	333
2	Payne, Matt	312
3	Payne, Mitch	308
4	Staley, Luke	290
5	Unga, Harvey	254
6	Gunther, Kurt	243
7	Willis, Jamal	240
8	Brown, Curtis	200
9	Hamilton, Waymon	192
10	Heimuli, Lakei	192

Over the past 10 to 15 years, college football passing attacks have adopted an increasingly dink and dunk flavor where they get an increase in their completion percentage by decreasing their yards per completion. In 2000, the NCAA had an average completion percentage of 54.1% and an average of 12.7 yards per completion, compared to 2011, where the averages are now 60.4% and 12.0.

The problem with this approach, however, is that some teams have taken the dink and dunk to enough of an extreme that their increase in completion is not sufficient to overcome the loss of efficiency resulting from shorter throws. Take a look at the grid below, which shows the winning percentage for a given combination of completion percentage and yards per completion. This is based on over 13,000 games played between 2001 and 2011.

Note the neat little diagonal in the middle of the chart which shows where the threshold is between a winning and losing record. It also shows that even if a team can complete 70%-75% of their passes, if they average less than 10 yards per completion, their odds of winning are still less than 50%.

This season, Jake Heaps has completed 57% of his passes for 10.1 yards per completion. The grid above shows that historically, that results in a winning percentage of 35%. Contrast that to Riley Nelson’s 61% completions for 14.8 yds per completion, which matches up with a winning percentage of 69% in the grid. Nelson is completing a higher percentage of his passes than Heaps and for a significantly larger average gain. This is the single biggest reason why BYU’s offensive output has shot up over the beginning of the season.

BYU is currently 17th in the nation in total defense.  A common response from the fan base is ‘yeah, but their strength of schedule is poor’.  Let’s look at how BYU did at limiting opposing offenses, relative to the other teams.

Opponent	Yds Allowed	Rank
Ole Miss	214	5
Texas	289	4
Utah	481	12
UCF	399	7
USU	406	4
SJSU	325	4
OSU	365	6
ISU	251	4
TCU	283	1
Idaho	241	3
NMSU	249	1
Hawaii	299	2

On average, BYU has held their opponent to the 4th fewest yards they’ve gained this season. Utah is the big outlier, otherwise BYU has held every other opponent at or below their average except for UCF.