This evening's projected BCS Standings hold no surprises at the very top, as LSU should greatly increase their hold on the #1 spot from last week's 3/10,000th point lead.
The Tigers garnered the majority of the 31 1st place votes that Oklahoma disgorged in the USA Today poll due to their loss to Texas Tech. LSU also will get more of a boost in the computers for beating 5-3 Auburn than Alabama will for defeating 3-5 Tennessee. In all, the Tigers should be a clear #1 this week, with Alabama a very solid #2.
Replacing Oklahoma at #3 will be Oklahoma State. The Cowboys are roughly equal to Stanford in the polls but will hold a substantial computer edge. Likewise, Clemson may match Oklahoma State in the computers but will be behind in the polls. The battle for #4 between Stanford, Boise State, and Clemson will be tight but we give it to Stanford as their win impressed the voters most. Boise State is very tight with Clemson; they could hold their spot in front of Stanford and Clemson but due to their narrow win over Air Force they didn't gain as much in the polls, and both the Tigers and Cardinal beat teams with winning records.
Here are our projected BCS standings for Sunday, October 23. *We use the current AP as a projection of the Harris as the two correlate well. Underlined partitions show significant breaks in ranking scores.
lw proj Team W L Comp USA Harris*
1 1 LSU 8 0 2 1 1
2 2 Alabama 8 0 1 2 2
4 3 Oklahoma St 7 0 3 4 3
8 4 Stanford 7 0 7 3 4
5 5t Boise St 7 0 6 5 5
7 5t Clemson 8 0 4 6 6
9 7 Arkansas 6 1 8 8 8
10 8 Oregon 6 1 11 7 7
11 9 Kansas St 7 0 5 12 10
16 10t Michigan St 6 1 13 10 9
3 10t Oklahoma 6 1 12 9 11
6 12 Wisconsin 6 1 15 11 12
12 13 Virg. Tech 7 1 10 15 15
13 14 Nebraska 6 1 17 13 13
19 15 Houston 7 0 9 18 18
There should be a sizeable gap between #6 and #7, whoever they are. But #7 through #10 are all very tight. We have Arkansas at #7, and Oregon the edge for #8 over Kansas State since they led last week. But all three spots are close. Michigan State was ranked very poorly by the computers last week; their win over Wisconsin will fix that somewhat but they may be below this range as our computer ranking estimate might be high.
Another gap separates the top 11 from the rest of the field. At #11 and #12 we see the week's big losers, Oklahoma and Wisconsin. The Sooners fall from the #3 spot all the way to #10 or #11 (we give the spot to the Spartans narrowly), while the Badgers drop to #12. Both will rank worse with the computers than the pollsters, though Oklahoma will fare better than the Badgers who already had a low computer composite last week. Michigan State's ascendance should push Virginia Tech and Nebraska down a notch, and with last week's #14 South Carolina idle and not advancing much in the polls, Houston might sneak in at #15.
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