In a season where Tech faces several less-than-stellar teams, this week's opponent stands out as possibly the worst of the worst. While UMass does have one more win than the last team Tech faced (the now 0-6 Rice Owls), the schedule for the Minutemen looks quite different than that of the Owls:
But even if we move past the 1-5 record to schools at the bottom of the FBS barrel, the typical team stats don't make things seem any less bleak for the team playing 1,300 miles from home Saturday night.
The UMass Minutemen rank in the Bottom 30 in Points per Game, Yards per Game, and Yards per Play, both on offense and on defense:
That's not great by any stretch of the imagination, but there are two areas where UMass does seem to excel.
The first is Red Zone Offense: the Minutemen have scored on 91% of the drives that cross the opponent's 20 yard line, the 28th best in the nation. That will be at odds with Tech's stellar Red Zone Defense, which has steadily improved to 8th best in the country, allowing points on only 64% of red zone drives.
But unfortunately for the Bulldogs, that #8 ranking may be a bit inflated based on who they've played so far this year:
Excluding Texas, every Red Zone scoring offense Tech has faced has been below average (83%). So this week, we may see Tech's Red Zone defense get it's first true test outside of Austin.
Another place UMass stands out is in the turnover department. The Minutemen have a turnover margin of 0 (compared to Tech's -1), but where UMass really shines is forcing interceptions. The Minutemen secondary has picked off one out of every 25 pass attempts thrown so far this year. That's 19th best in the nation, the highest ranked team Tech still has left on their schedule:
But then again, the UMass defense is also allowing an egregious completion percentage of 71%.
So just don't expect to see the passes fall to the ground very often Saturday night, at least when the Tech offense is on the field. It's pretty likely somebody will catch it, even if it's sometimes the other team.
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Nathan is also a contributor to gtpdd.dog, a lighthearted Louisiana Tech blog. Be sure to check out @gotechplsdntdie on Twitter.
