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Topic: What team is your team's "kryptonite?
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utee94 · « **Reply #14 on:** June 05, 2025, 12:07:49 PM »

Quote from: FearlessF on June 05, 2025, 11:40:13 AM

OR

What does that Nebraska-Texas all-time record look like?

FearlessF · « **Reply #15 on:** June 05, 2025, 12:15:34 PM »

sorry, can't seem to find it
that's OK, it's a Big Ten thang

betarhoalphadelta · « **Reply #16 on:** June 05, 2025, 12:49:06 PM »

Quote from: SFBadger96 on June 05, 2025, 11:59:04 AM

Off the top of my head, I think of Northwestern as Wisconsin's. Probably because I have an outsized view of what Wisconsin football should be, but I feel like there have been way too many inexplicable losses to Northwestern. Penn State is never worse than pretty good. Should the Badgers have a better record against them? Maybe, but losing to Penn State doesn't hurt the way losing to Northwestern does.

I have no idea if the data bears this out, but it always pisses me off. The most embarassed I have ever been for Wisconsin football was in 2023 when Northwestern came to Camp Randall and kicked the snot out of the Badgers. Unreal.

Agreed. Knowing what the schools have been for the last ~30 years, I would NOT expect that Wisconsin is only 0.560 against Northwestern.

I.e. if you think of Purdue and Northwestern as somewhere near equal (we're a perfect .500 against each other over that span), it makes no sense that Wisconsin is 0.560 against one of us, and 0.827 against the other.

That said, the other schools for Wisconsin in that range are Iowa (0.556) and MSU (0.550). Northwestern actually stands up fairly well against Iowa (0.483), and worse but not deplorable against MSU (0.391).

So maybe I'm unfairly thinking the nerds from Evanston are worse than they actually are.

847badgerfan · « **Reply #17 on:** June 05, 2025, 12:55:59 PM »

NERDS!

SFBadger96 · « **Reply #18 on:** June 05, 2025, 01:01:46 PM »

Quote from: betarhoalphadelta on June 05, 2025, 12:49:06 PM

So maybe I'm unfairly thinking the nerds from Evanston are worse than they actually are.

I'm sure I suffer from that, but I don't care. It reminds me of when I went to see a football game at UNLV (I was in Vegas for work and wanted to get away from the Strip). The game was fine (vs TCU, I think--old school Mountain West game (/irony)), but walking out of there, all I could think was that a Power 5 team should never lose to a team with that kind of investment in football.

utee94 · « **Reply #19 on:** June 05, 2025, 01:36:04 PM »

jgvol · « **Reply #20 on:** June 05, 2025, 01:41:50 PM »

What? Road games.

Who? Mostly Florida, but on occasion Arkansas.

ELA · « **Reply #21 on:** June 05, 2025, 02:06:52 PM »

Off the top of my head, Purdue. Not sure if the record bears it out, but there were some oddly close games in the early 2010s when MSU was at its peak, and Purdue was at its worst, where MSU barely won. In MSU's 2013 season where they went 9-0 in Big Ten play, with all wins by double digits, the nearest miss was needing a scoop and score to turn a 7-0 lead against Purdue into 14-0. I think the CFP team took a 21-0 1st quarter lead, and then needed a 4th quarter stop after Purdue had the ball in MSU territory down just 21-17. Hell, the 2021 Peach Bowl team, which beat Miami, UM and PSU's only bad loss was at Purdue

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #22 on:** June 05, 2025, 02:52:05 PM »

Quote from: SFBadger96 on June 05, 2025, 11:59:04 AM

Off the top of my head, I think of Northwestern as Wisconsin's. Probably because I have an outsized view of what Wisconsin football should be, but I feel like there have been way too many inexplicable losses to Northwestern. Penn State is never worse than pretty good. Should the Badgers have a better record against them? Maybe, but losing to Penn State doesn't hurt the way losing to Northwestern does.

I have no idea if the data bears this out, but it always pisses me off. The most embarassed I have ever been for Wisconsin football was in 2023 when Northwestern came to Camp Randall and kicked the snot out of the Badgers. Unreal.

The data definitely bears it out and the response I was going to give here was almost exactly what @betarhoalphadelta said.

Northwestern (.436) and Purdue (.414) have similar records overall in the games we are looking at here so Wisconsin's record *should* be roughly the same against those two but instead they have flat dominated Purdue (21-4-1) while being barely over .500 against Northwestern (14-11). Also, Wisconsin's .560 winning percentage against Northwestern is very similar to their winning percentage against substantially better MSU (.550) and Iowa (.556) teams.

As per usual, we are really only talking about a couple of games. If you took two Wisconsin wins over PU away and gave UW those wins over NU instead then Wisconsin would be:

.640 against NU, 16-9 and
.750 against PU, 19-6-1

That would match roughly what you would expect statistically.

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #23 on:** June 05, 2025, 03:00:13 PM »

Quote from: betarhoalphadelta on June 05, 2025, 12:49:06 PM

So maybe I'm unfairly thinking the nerds from Evanston are worse than they actually are.

I don't think you are. When you talk about a range, it is true that NU's winning percentage is next after MSU so they are close to MSU and Iowa in being only just behind them but . . .

The actual percentage gap is huge. In these games:

Iowa is .542
MSU is .511
NU is .436
PU is .414
MN is .349

Northwestern is right between MSU and PU but they are a LOT closer to PU than they are to MSU. For that matter, Northwestern is almost as close to Minnesota as they are to MSU.

Not all gaps are the same and the gap between MSU and NU is the second largest behind only the gap between #1 and #2.

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #24 on:** June 05, 2025, 03:03:21 PM »

Quote from: MikeDeTiger on June 05, 2025, 11:48:47 AM

They might qualify after all. While they were good historically, we were close to the same level.

All-time win%
UT: .673 (11th)
LSU: .655 (14th)

Conf. Championships
UT: 16
LSU: 16

All-time wins
UT: 886 (10th)
LSU: 852 (12th)

Based on that, you probably wouldn't expect a 10-21-3 record against them, but that's what it is. And that includes an outlier period of 5 straight wins beginning in 2006. So think about this, in the first ~80 years of playing each other, LSU accrued just a 5-20-3 record against them. Not nearly as close as their records might suggest.

I stand corrected, this IS what I'm looking for here. Tennessee has a slightly better overall history so you would expect them to have a slightly over .500 record against LSU but not 21-10-3.

medinabuckeye1 · « **Reply #25 on:** June 05, 2025, 05:45:54 PM »

I was thinking that a chart might help to visualize this so here it is:

Ohio State's and Indiana's lines are contiguous. The other nine lines have a break because you don't play yourself.

Start with looking at Ohio State's line. It starts at the left with Ohio State's worst record against any Big11Ten/B1G team which is .633 on 19-11 against Michigan then generally ascends as you move across reaching a peak of 1.000 on 27-0 against Indiana. There are two oddities that jump out to me:

Purdue:
Ohio State is #1 against nine of the 10 teams listed here and the exception is Purdue. It is a BIG exception. Not only is Ohio State not #1 against the Boilermakers, they aren't even in the top-3. The Buckeyes have the fourth best record against Purdue at .750 on 15-5 which trails PSU (.889), Wisconsin (.827), and Michigan (.789). I find it kinda funny that while Purdue is the one team that Michigan did better against than Ohio State, the Wolverines still aren't #1 because they were outdone by PSU and UW.

Illinois:
The Buckeyes are #1 against Illinois but it is REALLY close. If you look at it, all the records against Illinois are bunched up. I *THINK* this is because if you think about Illinois' history they really aren't a consistently moderately bad team. Instead they have tended to be downright awful most of the time and then a title contender once in a while. Consequently, they are better than their peers at beating tOSU and Michigan because when they are good, they tend to be REALLY good but then the rest of the time they just suck so they aren't as good as you might expect at beating Indiana, Minnesota, and especially Purdue. Illinois has the smallest top-to-bottom gap in winning percentage against:

.818 Ohio State, 18-4
.813 Michigan State, 13-3
.796 Wisconsin, 21-5
.789 Michigan, 15-4
.783 Penn State, 18-5
.720 Purdue, 18-7
.708 Iowa, 17-7
.613 Northwestern, 19-12
.577 Minnesota, 15-11
.455 Indiana, 10-12

The only top-to-bottom gap in winning percentage against that is remotely close to that small is for Ohio State where the best is Michigan's .367 and the worst is Indiana's 0.000.

Brutus Buckeye · « **Reply #26 on:** June 05, 2025, 06:18:24 PM »

OSU is 0-2 vs the Cocks; back to back Outback bowls with two different HCs.

MrNubbz · « **Reply #27 on:** June 05, 2025, 07:38:59 PM »

Ya got curbstomped the 1st time and jobbed the 2nd

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Topic: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

utee94

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

FearlessF

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

betarhoalphadelta

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

847badgerfan

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

SFBadger96

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

utee94

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

jgvol

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

ELA

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

medinabuckeye1

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

medinabuckeye1

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

medinabuckeye1

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

medinabuckeye1

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

Brutus Buckeye

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?

MrNubbz

Re: What team is your team's "kryptonite?