The recent hiring by Miami of Ohio of Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Haywood for Head Coach has gotten The Nudge to seriously reconsider his FIVE STAR pick of Notre Dame winning in the Hawaii Bowl on Christmas Eve.
The Nudge has a rule in the wisdom of Nudgedom; if there is even the slightest of doubt about a pick, it can be in no way shape or form a FIVE STAR play. And I am starting to have serious doubts about this game. Mike Haywood is a former Notre Dame player, he's worked at Texas and LSU and finally got his dream job of coaching at Notre Dame. In the beginning of the year, The FrontButt told Mike he would be calling the plays for the offense all season long. As the season started to crumble and The FrontButt got nervous about his firing being right around the corner, The FrontButt took over the playcalling. And we all saw how good that went, they lost to Syracuse and got walloped by USC.
Now with Haywood with one foot out the door, I have to question just how much effort he's been able to put into the offensive scheme for the Bowl game. He was interviewing for jobs and structuring a contract with Miami, OH., and it must have taken time away from game planning.For some reason, I have visions of Jimmy Clausen surfboarding and hitting on Hawaiian girls right now without a care in the world about what the game is going to be like.
So The Nudge started looking at Hawaii defensive stats for home games alone. The team doesn't travel well this year. I took the BearClaws game out of the equation, due to the fact that B-Kell's boys were a far superior team than Notre Dame or the Warriors and that game was a little off anyway cause the BearClaws had already locked down a BCS Bowl and conference championship.
For the year, Hawaii's defense is ranked 71 overall averaging giving up 27 points per game. But at home, with a 5-1 (No Cincy) record, they are averaging giving up only 18 points per game. In the Nevada win, they held Colin Kaepernick to 173 yards passing. In the New Mexico (there's a new mexico) they did allow Chase Holbrook to throw for almost 400 yards.
Since Hawaii QB Greg Alexander became the starter 6 games ago, the Warriors have gone 4-2, counting the Cincy loss. So effectively, they've gone 4-1 in their last 5 games without the Cincy loss. He's thrown for 1550 yards with 12 TD's.
There has also been major line movement in the spread in this game. Hawaii started out as the favorite giving 1 and a nudge. Now their the dog getting 1 and a nudge. That means that most of the plays in this one are heading towards ND to win outright. This ordinarily would be a good sign for The Nudge, this is what you look for. But I still can't get over the very low confidence I now have in Weiss. I'm officially calling this a stay away play. Don't go either way. But I have to make a pick so here it goes. My new pick in this one is now Hawaii 1* and may God have mercy on us all. For the record, The Nudge has never done an about face of this magnitude in the history of Nudgery.
The over/under in this one is 48, I would go under. 1*
Now since you suffered through the photo of The FrontButt enjoying his summer vacation doing some yard work, I'll leave you off with the destined to be Nudgette of the week, Azzurri Nudgette Elisabetta Gregoraci, enjoy. Ciao sportza fanza!
