Cotton Bowl Preview: Against Kansas State, Arkansas Looks to Send SEC Out on a High Note
by cocknfire on Jan 6, 2012 2:37 PM EST
in SEC Football
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AT&T Cotton Bowl, Jan. 6, 8 p.m. ET, FOX
We've heard since sometime last year that if Arkansas were in any division other than the SEC West, it would have the chance to play for championships. After all, Arkansas had the great misfortune of facing three of the four other ten-win teams in the SEC, and went 1-2 against LSU, Alabama and South Carolina.
Playing for a Cotton Bowl championship against a 10-win Kansas State team will have to do. It's really not that bad an option; at 7-2 in the Big 12, the Wildcats were the conference runners-up to Oklahoma State. A win there would come close to validating the idea of Arkansas as a national power with bad luck. It would also help the SEC's bowl record, ensuring that only two of the conference's nine teams in bowl games lost to a team from outside the conference.
The problem is that the game looks like an unpredictable barnburner. This is not a classic match-up of strength on strength; in fact, it's more of a clash between strengths and weaknesses. Kansas State is terrible on defense in terms of passer efficiency -- they rank seventh even in the air-happy Big 12 -- which is of course exactly where a Bobby Petrino offense thrives. Arkansas, meanwhile, is pretty weak when it comes to containing the run -- despite winning seven games by 10 or more points. That makes the matchup a favorable one for Kansas State, which gets 56 percent of its offensive yardage on the run.
On the other hand, you can argue that Kansas State isn't really that intimidating a 10-win team. After all, the Wildcats defeated just one BCS team by more than a single score all year -- and that was Kansas. When it comes to major offensive and defensive statistics, they don't really do anything particularly well. It could be that the Wildcats are more lucky than good.
If that's the case, the game is going to be a rout. After all, Arkansas has come this far on bad luck, and should be able to stop a team that's winning based solely on good luck. Even so, it will take a while for the Razorbacks to pull away.
Arkansas 45, Kansas State 35
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I'm guessing it goes KSU's way early
Their QB is excellent, and his power running ability could seriously hurt Arkansas. I’m guessing Arkansas gets back into it later in the game, with the outcome depending on whether KSU can make some big (or lucky) plays late.
Not worried about the offense changing hands, since it’s really Petrino’s rather than the OC’s, but the defense is a big unknown with the new DC.
Between KSU’s strengths and Arkansas’s past bowl performances, I’m not at all confident going into this game. The Clemson game made the anxiety both better and worse, in that ‘we can’t possibly be that bad…wait, WHAT IF WE’RE THAT BAD?!’ sort of way.
I do think Arkansas is good enough to win solidly, I just don’t know if we will.
I'm honestly not that worried about the new DC...
I agree that it is a big unknown, but is that necessarily a bad thing? It isn’t like our defense was setting the world on fire during the season. And a lot of the letdown on the defensive side of the ball this year can be attributed to injury; so this should be the best our defense has looked since the beginning of the year. Now that doesn’t exactly mean that I think that our defense is going to be a steel curtain, I just don’t see it regressing due to the coaching change.
I do have a tad bit of concern over our offense, but it has nothing to do with Paul coming in as the new OC. I just worry that our offense may be a tad out of sync to start the game since the players haven’t seen game time action in 6 weeks (see last year’s sugar bowl). I just hope that Jarius, Joe, Jerry, Jake, and the rest of the seniors will come out focused since it will be their last game as Razorbacks and remedy the problem that we have had with slow starts this past year. Also, I have read comments from a few KSU fans that allude to the fact that the wildcats struggle with slow starts as well.
My biggest worry is Collin Klein. He is a running qb…sometimes it looks like our defense thinks that all dual-threat qbs are carriers of the bubonic plague. So lets hope we can contain him.
by coastalrazorback on Jan 6, 2012 4:32 PM EST up reply actions
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