Prepping for the Minnesota vs Rutgers Dive
Alright, folks, just sat down today feeling like crunching some college football numbers. I remembered last weekend’s Minnesota Golden Gophers vs Rutgers Scarlet Knights game got talked up, thought it’d be fun to really dig into the individual player stats, see who stood out beyond the final score. Had my coffee, booted up the laptop – nothing fancy, just ready to hunt down the data.
First thing? Finding the official stats. Went straight to the usual Big Ten sources, their official post-game pages. Took me a solid ten minutes of clicking around menus labeled “Statistics” and “Box Scores” buried under news articles. Finally landed on the main event page. Boom. Felt like finding the right page in an old manual.
Started simple. Scanned through the main team stats – rushing yards, passing, all that jazz. But I really wanted the player stuff. Scrolled down, eyes peeled for “Individual” or “Player Stats” sections. Found it tucked under “Rushing.” Okay, cool. Opened my trusty (and kinda messy) spreadsheet tool – just copied the first column headers straight across: Player, Pos, Att (Rushes), Yds, Avg, TD. Easy enough.
Plowing Through the Running Backs & Wideouts
Copied Minnesota’s top rushers first. Just selected the rows, pasted them into my spreadsheet under the Gophers tab. Did the same for Rutgers’ main ball carriers right below, made a separate section for them. Then flipped over to “Receiving.” Same drill: Player, Pos, Rec (Catches), Yds, Avg, TD. Yanked the top receivers for both squads. Felt satisfying, like filling in slots on a bingo card.
QB stuff was next. Headed to “Passing.” Needed Completions, Attempts, Yards, TDs, those brutal INTs. Pulled Minnesota’s starter first. Had his numbers looking decent. Then Rutgers… man, their starter’s stats were rougher. Higher attempts, lower completion rate, picks. Just dumped both QBs’ full lines into the sheet. Plain as day.
Digging into Defense & The Annoying Bits
Now, tackling the defensive stats? That part always trips me up. Different sources organize these wildly. Found “Defense” after some more hunting. Wanted tackles mostly – solo and assists. Sometimes they list sacks or tackles for loss separately, sometimes lumped. Today it was grouped. Copied the top tacklers for both teams. Noted the difference – Minnesota’s leading guy had way more total tackles than Rutgers’ top man. Huh. Marked that mentally.
Oh, and special teams! Kickers and punters. Grabbed their names, field goals made/missed, extra points, punt yard averages. Easy to miss, but it matters.
Right when I thought I was done? Noticed the website had separate tabs for different quarters of player stats. Got momentarily excited thinking maybe per-quarter trends? Clicked… total mess. Data was sparse, navigation was clunky. Said “Nah, not today,” closed those tabs fast. Sometimes extra effort isn’t worth the headache.
Making Sense of It All (& The Unexpected Twist)
So, there my spreadsheet sat. Had numbers for RBs, WRs, QBs, top defenders, kickers. Scrolled through. The patterns jumped out: Minnesota’s workhorse back getting tons of carries, Rutgers QB struggling, Minnesota’s defense being everywhere making tackles.
Thought I’d make some nice little tables or charts for the blog post. Got distracted trying to format the cell borders neatly. Spent five minutes making it “pretty,” then realized plain text probably works fine for sharing raw notes like this. Felt kinda silly.
Finished up my coffee, shut the laptop. Biggest “ah-ha”? Wasn’t any single superstar. Just confirmation that Minnesota’s offense ground it out relentlessly, and their defense swarmed. Rutgers looked disjointed. Simple as that.
And you know the kicker? All this stat diving took longer than actually watching the game highlights did yesterday. Classic. That’s the fun though, right? Now you know how I got this stuff down.
