BSD Mailbag 9.3.13

Much ado has been made about the 1-16 3rd down conversions. Can you talk people off the ledge for me?—misdreavus79

I will absolutely, gladly talk everyone off the ledge. I’m not concerned, and here’s why: IT WAS THE FIRST GAME OF THE SEASON.

Cuse has a good run defense with a defense-first minded head coach. They stacked the box most plays, with eight or nine guys up to prevent the run, daring Hack to beat them through the air (hint: it might have worked. Only it didn’t.). Couple that with a very conservatively-called game from a coach who doesn’t want to put his freshman QB in a position to fail, or let future opponents in on his new playbook quite yet, and I’m not concerned at all about this. We won the game, after all.

Now, if we have the same woes this week against Eastern Michigan, then I’ll be concerned (because those Eagles are just not very good). But today, as I’m writing this, I’m just not concerned about this yet—my biggest concern is still depth overall.

if when we go 12-0 this year, what will our average margin of victory have to be for AP writers to say "eff the sanctions, I’m voting them for the MNC"? The 94 team averaged a 25.7 ppg margin, so I’m guessing maybe a full 4 TDs per game?—vern05

I don’t think the margin of victory will have any impact whatsoever—the only way we get any votes for MNC is if every other team has at least one loss (and, likely if the SEC winner has two losses a la LSU in 2007). The odds of that are very unlikely, but I guess could happen…but probably not coupled with the Nittany Lions running the table. Sorry, dude.

Do you expect the PSU run game to improve from week 1 to week 2 and will the Cuse D be one of the best Ds PSU faces this year?—gopsuchef

Absolutely, and yes. I touched on this a little bit above, but looking back, I think this past week’s game will be our worst running game of the season (potentially OSU excepted). If you look at last years stats, aside from OSU, our first two games of the season had the worst running stats all year. This year I expect no different.

You know, they say that a team improves the most between week one and week two. This team should be no different, and I expect improvements across the board (even in kicking—though it’s difficult to improve upon 100%, it’s not impossible).

I’ll speak on this in the podcase, but I fully expect all three backs to get into the game against the Eagles, and Penn State to have almost 300 yards on the ground. That’s going to be BOB’s area of focus on the gameplan this week, I’ll bet.

So John Urschel says his favorite mathematical theorem is the Riemann Series Theorem. While truly fascinating (my favorite implication of it: it proves that the addition of real numbers is not necessarily commutative for an infinite series), it that really better than Steinitz’s more generalized version of the theorem?—ckmneon

I’m sorry, I’ll only answer questions that are asked in English.

What’s your favorite N64 game?—Nick P Chris

What’s an N64?

In seriousness, I never had an N64 (regular Nintendo and game boy, then a Sega Game Gear only) so I am not qualified to answer this question.

Why do you paint your kitchen so often?—gbru316

I don’t…I think the last time was about 5-6 years ago. Should this be something I’m concerned about? Is there a reason why this is important?

I tried to do a google search to no avail, so we’ll just say you don’t need to paint so often as long as you’re not a messy chef/baker, okay?

Would any reasonable person truly prefer a cheesesteak over any sandwich from DiNics?—Rambler

So I had to look up what DiNic’s was, and holy crap. Now I want to go there. And no, no reasonable person should want that.

Where can I get 100% cotton gym shorts (in every fuckin' color) that leave very little to the imagination?—WBF

I’d imagine you didn’t expect me to track down a legitimate answer to this…but here’s where I surprise you. Gary Majdell Sport. You’re welcome.

Have you ever taken a leak in any of the planters on Allen Street?—MainLion

A lady never pees and tells

(this means no)

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