Where I think you go wrong is in removing those results when trying to determine how good or bad PU or OSU look.
Just to clarify, I threw that out there as an "if those results were outliers" thing, it isn't a deeply held belief.
While there may be specific reasons why that matchup is good or bad for each team, it's true that there are ALWAYS specific teams that are better or worse matchups for any given team. You have to expect that.
Fair point.
It's like the old "well if you take the big plays away, that offense looked pretty pedestrian" canard...
Purdue's a decent team. Not a great team. Not a team that should be in contention for the league crown. But solidly top half of the B1G sort of team.
I agree on both of those. If your offense is built on big plays then it doesn't matter they they aren't very good in the rest of their plays so long as they achieve enough of those.
Honestly, I came here asking this because as an Ohio State fan who hasn't seen much of Purdue other than them twice beating my team which is fourth in the standings and only 1/2 game out of second and owns wins over #2 and #5 (both on the road) I was internally thinking of Purdue as MUCH better than 7-5. Based on what I've seen (mostly just them beating tOSU twice) I more or less expected them to be 9-3 or better. They aren't so I came here basically wondering if that was because they aren't actually as good as they looked vs tOSU or because they aren't actually as bad as they have performed in their other 10 games (5-5, 0-4 against .500+).
Ohio State is IMHO a better team than Purdue, despite the double H2H result. They may be non-replicable outliers, or they could [due to matchup] be replicable outliers.
Well, we'll see. Honestly, I'm still not sure that the Buckeyes are all that good. The loss to Northwestern troubles me. None of the other good teams have done that. The close win at home over PSU troubles me a bit. OTOH, the road wins over IL and UW are obviously good so . . . we'll see.
Either way, Purdue to me looks like a team that I wouldn't be shocked to see them as 2-4 against the >.500 teams in the conference, and Ohio State is a team that I'm not shocked to see as 4-2 against the >.500 teams in the conference, regardless of which team those wins and losses come from.
I get where you are coming from here. Assume the following for a minute:
- Ohio State had held on to their late lead in Columbus over PU and won that game, and
- Purdue had mounted a comeback in Champaign and beaten Illinois, and
- Illinois had finished their comeback against Ohio State and beaten the Buckeyes in Champaign
If those three things had happened every team would have the same record that they have now but this wouldn't have been a question. tOSU and PU would be 1-1 against each other and PU would be 1-3 against the rest of the .500+ while tOSU was 3-1 against the rest of the .500+.
It is only a question for me right now because of the oddity of Purdue's ONLY .500+ wins and tOSU's ONLY .500+ losses coming against each other. That makes me wonder . . .
Right now OSU is 1 game ahead in the B1G standings with a more difficult schedule left to play. But I think they're a stronger team, so I expect they'll probably finish the regular season still ahead in the B1G standings despite the more difficult remaining schedule.
We'll see. Purdue has played a tough schedule so far (6x .500+ and 11x top-11) but Ohio State's hasn't been much easier (6x .500+ and 8x top-11). The difference is that Ohio State's overall schedule looks to be tougher because what the Buckeyes have left is a lot tougher (4x .500+ and 7x top-11 vs 1x .500+ and 4x top-11).
I definitely wouldn't count Purdue out of the race for the top-4 slots. They are in sixth now but I think that their remaining schedule is easier than #2-5 and they are only one game behind #4/5 and 1.5 games behind #2/3 so it could definitely happen.