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Friday, April 30, 2010

USC at UCLA Fan Guide

The USC versus UCLA dual meet is the greatest rivalry in all of college track, and tomorrow will be their 77th meeeting. In 1976, Ducky Drake Stadium's attendance record was set at this meet when 15,011 fans came out. In my own college team rankings, the men's meet matches up #7 UCLA and #8 USC, while the women match #9 USC and #22 UCLA.

In the spirit of Let's Run's recent fan guides, I've accumulated what you need to know while watching tomorrow's USC - UCLA dual meet on FloTrack.

First, the webcast info. FloTrack will be following it live beginning at 3:45 PM EDT (12:45 local time). They'll have a great two-camera setup, with one camera on the track and the other on the field events.

I've cribbed the entire preview below from "Kenny" at the USC track message boards, but reorganized it to match the meet schedule. His overall predictions:
Women's predicted score: USC- 83 UCLA- 80
The UCLA vs USC women's dual track meet should be close but I have to give the edge to the Trojans. The big advantage the USC throwers have over UCLA should be the difference. If the Bruins can find a way to win the 4x100 relay then they could pull off an upset.

Mens' predicted score: USC- 84 UCLA -79
The men's dual meet should be close like the women's. But the Trojans have slightly more depth and dependable points. The Bruins have the home field advantage and this has proved to be helpful as the Trojans haven't won at UCLA's Drake Stadium on the men's side in 33 years. The USC throwers and vaulters do not do well at Drake Stadium and this bad luck will have to continue for the Bruins if they want any chance of upseting their cross town rivals.

Below is an event-by event breakdown of Kenny's predictions, with handy color-coding to keep track of what's what. The "running score" uses the predictions, so when inevitably the actual results differ from the conventional wisdom, you can update the score from there.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Good dope, but the Bruins will find a way to win again in Drake!

Anonymous said...

You must be smoking it, because your mind has been clouded from the smoke.