[BostonCard]

I think there are a couple things happening here. First, before the season we typically have a poll of what people expect to finish (I couldn't find one from this year, but we definitely have in the past) and the median result is usually 8-4 or 9-3. If you actually try to handicap probabilities of winning and guess our record (as some posters do, and predictors like Connelly do) then you usually end up right in that range. So, in some sense, a season like this one is what we typically expect given our schedule and various uncertainties associated with the season.

Then we actually play the games. Instead of a level-headed "well yeah winning in Seattle is hard, we'll probably lose" we see how we lose and say "we could've won if not for..." and feel like we should've won. Suddenly those pre-season predictions of 8-4 or 9-3 fade from memory and we all wonder why we're not going 12-0 every year. After all, if it weren't for this play and that play...

Of course, you never do that in the other direction, flip the various close wins to losses, so it just feels like we underperformed. But we didn't. We did basically as well as you would've expected before the season. And, frankly, if you had known before the season that we'd be a walking MASH unit the whole season you'd probably think finishing 9-4 would be a miracle. But, again, it's hard to feel that way knowing how close we were in several of those games.

Good point Stupac.  You are right that we probably did about what we expected.  I think part of the disappointment is that the conference championship was there for the taking.  UW was a weaker Pac-12 champion than expected; it lost to friggin Cal, for goodness sakes.  We had WSU on the ropes at home, and we literally gave Utah the game away in the form of turnovers.  The issue, of course, is that other than Utah, we weren't really much better than any of those teams.  I mean we had a chance to win, which is frustrating, but we wouldn't have won a hypothetical majority of 1000 match-ups.  And then of course there are a couple of games that we had no business winning (Oregon, Pitt), and as I noted in the Sun Bowl takeaways thread, a mismatch between game flow (who is dominating on the field) and scores is a no-win situation.  If you win on the scoreboard, you lament at the poor quality of play.  If you outplay your opponent but are outscored, you lament the fact that you didn't get the win.

So, although numerically we had 9 wins which is good, in some ways it feels like a 7-6 season.

BC

[BostonCard]

I think there are a couple things happening here. First, before the season we typically have a poll of what people expect to finish (I couldn't find one from this year, but we definitely have in the past) and the median result is usually 8-4 or 9-3. If you actually try to handicap probabilities of winning and guess our record (as some posters do, and predictors like Connelly do) then you usually end up right in that range. So, in some sense, a season like this one is what we typically expect given our schedule and various uncertainties associated with the season.

Then we actually play the games. Instead of a level-headed "well yeah winning in Seattle is hard, we'll probably lose" we see how we lose and say "we could've won if not for..." and feel like we should've won. Suddenly those pre-season predictions of 8-4 or 9-3 fade from memory and we all wonder why we're not going 12-0 every year. After all, if it weren't for this play and that play...

Of course, you never do that in the other direction, flip the various close wins to losses, so it just feels like we underperformed. But we didn't. We did basically as well as you would've expected before the season. And, frankly, if you had known before the season that we'd be a walking MASH unit the whole season you'd probably think finishing 9-4 would be a miracle. But, again, it's hard to feel that way knowing how close we were in several of those games.

Good point Stupac.  You are right that we probably did about what we expected.  I think part of the disappointment is that the conference championship was there for the taking.  UW was a weaker Pac-12 champion than expected; it lost to friggin Cal, for goodness sakes.  We had WSU on the ropes at home, and we literally gave Utah the game away in the form of turnovers.  The issue, of course, is that other than Utah, we weren't really much better than any of those teams.  I mean we had a chance to win, which is frustrating, but we wouldn't have won a hypothetical majority of 1000 match-ups.  And then of course there are a couple of games that we had no business winning (Oregon, Pitt), and as I noted in the Sun Bowl takeaways thread, a mismatch between game flow (who is dominating on the field) and scores is a no-win situation.  If you win on the scoreboard, you lament at the poor quality of play.  If you outplay your opponent but are outscored, you lament the fact that you didn't get the win.

So, although numerically we had 9 wins which is good, in some ways it feels like a 7-6 season.

BC