College Football 24/7
An excellent match-up starts the college football betting week
2007-09-28
An excellent match-up starts the college football week, involving two teams from non-BCS conferences that have a reputation of playing big time football on a national scale. Both Southern Miss and Boise State had last week off and will be fully rested heading into this non-conference encounter.
With apologies to the other contenders in C-USA and the WAC, these are two teams are always among the leaders in there respective conferences. Southern Miss scored a big win at East Carolina 28-21 and should be favored the rest of the season in league play, with Central Florida the likely only other contender. This will be the Golden Eagles third road game in a row. Coach Jeff Bower prefers the running game and has tried to institute more passing this decade with mixed success depending on the quarterback. Sophomore tailback Damion Fletcher leads an offense that is churning out 182 yards per game on the ground and 207.7 thru the air.
Senior Jeremy Young is having his best season for Southern Miss; completing 53.3 percent of his pass attempts for better than 200 yards and is elusive runner in the open field. The defense was pushed around by Tennessee in 39-19 loss, causing numbers to be higher than expected from what is normally a pretty staunch group.
Boise State bounced back from road loss to Washington with a 24-14 win at home against Wyoming. The Broncos do not appear to have the firepower of recent vintage, scoring just 17 points per game against better competition. Coach Chris Peterson understands his team is making a transition and is leaning heavily on running Ian Johnson, while Taylor Tharp grows into quarterback position. Johnson has been the focus of the opposition’s attention, as he is averaging less than 100 yards per game. Collectively, the Broncos are still running the ball for 199 yards a game, though it should be noted they are doing so against teams allowing 208 PG.
Thursday’s ESPN match-up has Boise State as 10.5-point favorites at Sportsbook.com with a total of 49.5. The Broncos are 4-2 against the spread off two non-covers in a row and is 17-3 ATS when not favored by more than 28 points at Bronco Stadium.
Both teams have a history of success against the opposing conference; Boise State is 13-1 vs. C-USA and Southern Miss 36-16 against the WAC. The Golden Eagles are a formidable squad, which has raised speculation why a double digit underdog. The simple truth is most linemakers grade out Boise State as 6 to 6.5 point faves on the blue turf at Bronco Stadium, making it one the toughest places in college football to play at. With this knowledge, the Broncos are 32-12 ATS as home favorites since they started making lines on there games.
Tune in at 7:45 Eastern to see if Jeff Bower’s Eagles can improve upon 4-8 ATS record when not playing on Saturday’s.
StatFox Forecaster – Southern Miss covers
StatFox Power Line – Boise State by 9
StatFox Outplay Factor – Boise State by 16
Click here to read latest College Football news