BTBS Week 2 Picks!

Not that anybody cares, but I came across an interesting conundrum this week.  Being that I've never attempted week-to-week "+" numbers before (previously I just tried to keep up with BCS play-by-plays during the season, then cranked out all the others in the offseason and came up with the "Final" rankings, but now I've got somebody helping me with the entry and can keep up better, week-to-week), I'm very much tinkering with the best way to phase out the 2009 projections with real 2009 data.  Clearly I can't just use Week One "+" numbers because, well, if everybody's only played one game, then everybody's "+" rating will be 100.0.  Doesn't really help me.  So I came up with two ways to do my Week Two projections, and obviously I have no idea which way is better.  The two methods disagree on quite a few spreads this week, so what I've done here is go with one method and add an asterisk to the games which the other method picked differently.  I'll commit to these picks but keep my eye on the other method to see which one does better this week.

Week One results: 23-17 (4-4 in Big 12 games).  The games I mentioned as BTBS locks went just 3-2.  As I mentioned yesterday, the BTBS picks started out 18-8 halfway through Saturday, and I was already planning the "Time to make some cash!!!!1!!!" Vegas trip in my head.  Then I went 3-9 on late-Saturday and Sunday before rallying to nail both Monday games and finish six games over .500.  Certainly not terrible, but not as good as things were looking mid-Saturday.

(In other words, I pulled a Pinkel.  As I've mentioned before, Pinkel's biggest problem before 2007 was that he would take a team with low expectations, get them to show enough to over-build expectations, then when they regressed to the mean the season would end up disappointing, even though they finished higher than they were predicted to finish before the season started.  Kind of like if Mizzou ends up going 8-4 this season.  We'd have all taken 8-4 before the season started, but now that we've seen what they're capable of, 8-4 will almost seem like a letdown.  But I digress.  Majorly.)

Big 12 picks here.  All other games after the jump.

I have no idea why the Texas projection is that close--I would think that Texas would win by 40--but as I've stated before, when I publicly disagree with the projections, they make me look silly, so I'll go with it.  Otherwise these look about right.  If Tech discovers a running game, they should have no trouble with Rice, but they were quite unimpressive last week, so their numbers went down a bit.  And clearly there's no "Iowa State really really gets up to play Iowa" part to the equation, so Iowa still gets the nod there.  If the Hawkeyes continue to perform like they did last week, then their numbers will fall pretty quickly, but since projections are still part of the equation, they get the benefit of the doubt.

Oh yeah, and Colorado and K-State better not mess around.

So your supposed locks this week are UConn, Wyoming, Rice and Georgia.  I'm queasy about both Wyoming and Rice, but we'll see.  The projections really didn't like UNC all that much, which explains the UConn pick, and really, it's the same with UGa.  The projections really liked the Bulldogs, so despite their iffy offensive performance in Stillwater, they get the benefit of the doubt here despite the fact that South Carolina's defense is pretty stout.