[CTcard]

I think Shaw really said it best. U$C played great. We didn't.

I have been travelling and working so haven't yet run down the board to get a sense of the response to the game here.

This part is important. U$C did play really well. I've watched most of it twice, and U$C made some superb plays, of both strength and athleticism. They are always very talented, but often don't perform at what would appear to be their best. Whether that was a one-off against us or a sign of better coaching and approach is unclear this early.

So, $C playing very well and Stanford not doing so was one part of the situation. That part didn't bother me so much. Teams play up and down during a season. At some level it always happens. If it becomes a trend, that indicates one kind of problem, but in a single game early in the season it could simply be the low end of the spectrum (see Northwestern 2015).

On the other hand, the other part of the loss was that U$C simply whipped us on both lines. That sort of thing doesn't get fixed in a short period of time. It reminds me of our two games vs ASU in 2013. In the first game we whipped them on both lines. After a great season, they headed into the conference championship game with all sorts of discussion about how they had figured out the mistakes they had made in the first game, that they had cleaned those up, and had all sorts of improved strategies to attack us. Then we proceeded to whip them again along both lines. I have no idea if they had better strategies or not, it just didn't matter.

[CTcard]

I think Shaw really said it best. U$C played great. We didn't.

I have been travelling and working so haven't yet run down the board to get a sense of the response to the game here.

This part is important. U$C did play really well. I've watched most of it twice, and U$C made some superb plays, of both strength and athleticism. They are always very talented, but often don't perform at what would appear to be their best. Whether that was a one-off against us or a sign of better coaching and approach is unclear this early.

So, $C playing very well and Stanford not doing so was one part of the situation. That part didn't bother me so much. Teams play up and down during a season. At some level it always happens. If it becomes a trend, that indicates one kind of problem, but in a single game early in the season it could simply be the low end of the spectrum (see Northwestern 2015).

On the other hand, the other part of the loss was that U$C simply whipped us on both lines. That sort of thing doesn't get fixed in a short period of time. It reminds me of our two games vs ASU in 2013. In the first game we whipped them on both lines. After a great season, they headed into the conference championship game with all sorts of discussion about how they had figured out the mistakes they had made in the first game, that they had cleaned those up, and had all sorts of improved strategies to attack us. Then we proceeded to whip them again along both lines. I have no idea if they had better strategies or not, it just didn't matter.