SP+ projects Georgia Tech vs. Bowling Green score

Georgia Tech faces Bowling Green on Saturday

Author:
Jackson Caudell
Publish date:
Sep 27, 2023 1:44 PM EDT

In this story:

Georgia Tech is coming off of a big win over Wake Forest over the weekend and now they return home to play in Bobby Dodd Stadium against Bowling Green, who is 1-3 heading into this matchup.

On paper, Georgia Tech is a much better team than Bowling Green, but they have a coach in Scott Loeffler who has been around for a long time and their quarterback, Connor Bazelak, is a former power five starter. One guy that does have a lot of respect for Bowling Green is Yellow Jackets head coach Brent Key:

"Scott Loeffler is a heck of a football coach. He has been around a long time and called a lot of plays and coached a lot of really good players and I have a lot of respect for him as a head coach and he understands what he has, the strengths and weaknesses on their team. They are going to get the ball out quick so we have to do well on the defensive side to try and affect the game based on us and our strengths and the game plan we will put in place."

While Key has a lot of respect for this team, Sportsbooks do not and neither do the analytics. ESPN's Bill Connelly and his SP+ system projected the scores of every game this week and he has Georgia Tech favored by 19 points and has the Yellow Jackets winning 37-18. He gives Georgia Tech an 86% chance to win the game.

Josh Robinson — Georgia Tech's defense dominated Wake Forest
Nathaniel Caudell

So what exactly is SP+ and what goes into making these rankings? Here is how Connelly formulates his rankings in his own words:

"I base SP+ projections on three primary factors, weighted by their predictiveness:

1. Returning production. The returning production numbers are based on rosters I have updated as much as possible to account for transfers and attrition. The combination of last year's SP+ ratings and adjustments based on returning production make up about half of the projections formula

2. Recent recruiting. This piece informs us of the caliber of a team's potential replacements (and/or new stars) in the lineup. It is determined by the past few years of recruiting rankings in diminishing order (meaning the most recent class carries the most weight). Beginning this season, I am also incorporating transfers -- both the quality and the volume -- in a different way. After last season's transfer-heavy recruiting shift, I've got a bit more data for how to handle that. This piece makes up about one-third of the projections formula.

3. Recent history. Using a sliver of information from previous seasons (two to four years ago) gives us a good measure of overall program health. It stands to reason that a team that has played well for one year is less likely to duplicate that effort than a team that has been good for years on end (and vice versa), right? This is a minor piece of the puzzle -- only about 15% -- but the projections are better with it than without.

A reminder on SP+: It's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren't intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year."