Mid-Season Report Card: UTEP

The Mid-Season Report Cards are a subjective look using objective numbers with a look toward the remainder of the season as well.  Teams are being reviewed in random order once they reach 6 games.

The UTEP Miners might be the strangest team in my jurisdiction.  They opened the season with a loss to Buffalo, who has since nose-dived (more later- they’re on the list for today too).  They got run out of the building by Texas and Kansas.  This past weekend, they lost to a pretty bad Memphis team.  Yet somehow, in week 5, they ran roughshod over Houston, who was sitting in between wins over Texas Tech and later Mississippi State.  Eleven days later and that game still baffles me.  It remains to be seen whether that win alone is enough to get Mike Price off the hot seat.

• Wins: C-. Normally, I’m giving a 2-4 team a D rating, but that win over Houston is worth something.  If you take Kansas and Texas out of the equation, they’re 2-2 against non-BCS teams, which isn’t the worst they could have done.
• Offense: D. The offense is generating 332 yards per game, down at 90th nationally, even with such a good game over Houston.  Scoring offense is a little better, at 81st, but still not good.  They’re going to have to ratchet the production up substantially to get back to .500 this year.
• Defense: F. Worse than the offense.  I’ll grant them that they’ve played 3 solid offensive teams, but they have the next-to-last total defense in the country, giving up 493 yards per game, which is more than Houston is putting up in each game on offense.  Only New Mexico State has put up less than 23 on the Miners.
• Special Teams:  D+. They’re right on the average in Punting, but below average in both forms of return yardage.
• Turnovers: B-. UTEP is +2 on the season, which is the same margin they had when they beat Houston.  Keep the turnovers coming, and they can still find some wins.
• Grading Curve: Bonus Points. But not to0 many.  3 Top 25 teams and 3 teams that could very well be bottom 25, if there were such a thing.  UTEP needs to win all their games against the Buffalos, NM States, and Memphis’ of the world, not just one of the three.
• Final Grade:  D+. If I call the Houston game a fluke, I sound like I’m biased towards Houston or not giving UTEP enough credit…but it sure looks like the Houston game was a fluke.  UTEP will have a chance to prove me wrong, but losing to Memphis by 15 wasn’t the way to start.

Remaining Games:

• Tulsa
• UAB
• at Tulane
• at SMU
• at Rice
• Marshall

Best Case Scenario: 5-1. Somewhere in there, UTEP has the guns to beat most of the teams on their schedule.  That slate has a couple good teams, a couple average teams, and a couple bad teams- UTEP can control which group they get lumped into.

Worst Case Scenario: 2-4. They could lose to the good teams and the average ones, which would surely be the end of the Mike Price era.

Prediction:3-3. I’m guessing they beat the bad teams and surprise one of the other group.  UTEP must have been hoping for a season with at least 7-8 wins.  If Houston wins 10 or 11 games, will UTEP’s win be worth bonus points in Mike Price’s job security?  My guess is that it won’t be enough, and UTEP has a new coach in 2010.