Scheduling Patsies Over Talent?

[bos]

Do you think it is better to schedule patsies over talented teams? I watch season openers and see how teams like Iowa, Texas, and alot of others play an easy team right off the bat. Then they look like they are just superior teams to the country since they beat Sister Mary of Poor University 65-0. We play an excellent team very close and people lose faith in us. I honestly think that playing awesome teams, win or lose, we play better because it points out weak spots in our game. If we play crap teams all of the time you are basically playing a practice game.......with of course the accidental chance of losing and looking like an idiot =) but that rarely happens. I dont know, what do you all think?

 

[melt]

I think the better situation would have been to play UNLV first then Toledo. UNLV is a decent team, much better than a 1AA, but still plenty beatable. It'd allow ISU to get their feet wet, without the chance of getting beat right out the gate. You do learn a lot more about your team playing better competition.

Look at Iowa last year, they crushed Ball State in the first game, then could barely get their offense started the next week against ISU. I think ISU will learn a lot about themselves after watching the film from the Toledo game.

I would prefer not playing any 1-AA teams, but putting UNI more in the middle of the schedule gives us a little break inbetween huge games.

 

[ISUFan22]

I don't think this Toledo thing could have worked out any better.

We're now battle tested...having to go 3 rounds of OT to win a game. The players are now grounded a bit after hearing a lot of praise in the off-season. Plus, the conditioning factor...going 3 OT's. And of course...we finally won an OT game.

We as fans may not like the fact we needed a stop on a 2-point conversion to win this game...but it was damn good for our team.

 

[HiltonMagic]

I don't think this Toledo thing could have worked out any better.

We're now battle tested...having to go 3 rounds of OT to win a game. The players are now grounded a bit after hearing a lot of praise in the off-season. Plus, the conditioning factor...going 3 OT's. And of course...we finally won an OT game.

We as fans may not like the fact we needed a stop on a 2-point conversion to win this game...but it was damn good for our team.

Uh-huh. Couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[loboclone]

Do you think it is better to schedule patsies over talented teams?


Better ask Rocky Long at New Mexico or Dan Hawkins at Colorado!

 

[crash_zone]

If I knew we would win every time, I'd love to play talented teams all day! As it is, we need both talented and patsies - the patsies are easy wins that (I hate to say it) we NEED in order to have a chance at the bowl season.

Also, don't pay attention to what the nay-sayers squawk about "ISU being weak because they just barely won"......they'll get their chance to see what we have in a few weeks!

 

[St8Grad]

Obviously the better the competition, the better you get. But if you can't beat them, then it can be a bad thing, since the Big 12 is tough enough by itself. I say alternate a patsy & a decent team to learn from your mistakes (against the decent team), but also gain confidence (against the patsy team). The patsy teams also allow you to get your 2nd & 3rd strings in the game to further develop your depth. This is vitally important when going into the rough Big 12 games.

 

[cstrunk]

Obviously the better the competition, the better you get. But if you can't beat them, then it can be a bad thing, since the Big 12 is tough enough by itself. I say alternate a patsy & a decent team to learn from your mistakes (against the decent team), but also gain confidence (against the patsy team). The patsy teams also allow you to get your 2nd & 3rd strings in the game to further develop your depth. This is vitally important when going into the rough Big 12 games.

Definately agree here. We had good competition from Toledo, should be able to get at least the 2nd string in against UNLV in time for Iowa, then Texas, followed by a slight breather with UNI and into the rest of the Big 12. By then we should have seen just about everything imaginable and *should be able to win the rest of the games (*key word).