Wed, December 22, 2010 5:19:27 PMMore Bowl Musings
From: Peter Lavette
To: asavick@hotmail.com; bradlazzari@hotmail.com; kevin.haas@chrobinson.com; jonathan hyun
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1-1 so far on numbered bowl musings with a lean to Troy which turned out to be a win. I had absolutely no idea on the game last night between Southern Miss and Louisville, so I didn't even bother sending out any thoughts. I thought both the spread and over/under were well lined, and that both were a complete tossup, so believe it or not, I laid off on that game...I thuink it's the first bowl game in 5 years that I had no action on. Good thing too. The spread ended up at Louiville -2.5. They won 31-28. The over/under was 60. It was the right game to lay off of.
3. Boise -16 v Utah: I should mention that this is play #1 for the LaVette family picks, and it's by a longshot. For some reason, this spread has dropped to 16, maybe it might go back up within the next couple of hours, who knows? Obviously, I'm never all that keen on laying this many points in a bowl game, but Utah had a chance to hang with a true contender in early November and got shellacked by TCU on their home field by 40. A lot of times, when I'm capping these bowl games, I try to put myself in each coach's shoes and try to gameplan for the opponent. If there's a clear strategy that I can come up with, that's a good sign for that team. In Boise's case, it's pretty obvious that they are going to want to stuff Utah's run and make backup QB Terrence Cain(the starter Wynn is doubtful) beat them with a passing attack. Since Utah has either failed to run or struggled mighttily in most of their last 5 games, this probably won't be too tough for the #4 rush defense in the country. In all seriousness, Utah should be on a 5 game losing streak. They lost to ND and TCU, and escaped by the skin of their teeth after being outplayed by SDSU, AirForce and BYU. They couldn't run effectively on AirForice...I'm going to assume they won't run on Boise either. On the flip side, how will Whittingham(an admittedly good coach) attack Boise? They are too balanced to concentrate on one area. You can only hope you just play out of your ass against them. I think Utah's only chance to compete in this one would be if Boise was completely unmotivated and dying to get the hell out of there. I don't think that will be the case, since they got into a mini brawl the other day with the Utes during some pre bowl function, and one of the Utes made fun of them on twitter.
"I can't wait to get out here wit these Boise State or should I say Girlse State they a bunch of cheerleaders...lol."-Utah WR DeVonte Christopher. My guess is that Boise comes out firing, and the Utah team that couldn't move it against Notre Dame and laid down against TCU shows up. 41-13 Boise.
4. San Diego St -3 1/2 v Navy: I'm sure that everyone knows that I love betting on service academies, and especially on navy in bowl games, but in this case, I really think the value lies with SDSU. The Aztecs have been a very solid team this year. they've lost 4 games: Heartbreakers(and controversial losses) to BYU and Utah by a FG, a last second loss at Missouri on a 68 yard TD pass a loss at TCU that turned out to be TCU's only close game all year. They are ranked 16th on ypp on defense and 12th in ypp on offense. They have very good balance on offense as well, as they have been good on the ground and also have a good QB in Ryan Lindley and two playmaking receivers. Navy is always a tough nut to crack, but this is one of the few years n which they really haven't played anyone. They've run on everyone, as usual, but the vast majority of the defenses they've played are ranked in the bottom fourth of the country...only Maryland and Air Force from their schedule were in the top 3/4 of teams in ypp, and they scored 14 and 6 points in those games. As I mentioned, SDSU is ranked 16th. That doesn't mean that they'll shut down Navy..far from it, since they gave up the requesite 300+ on the ground against Air Force, but that didn't stop them from winning the game. But navy is going to have all kinds of trouble stopping the SDSU passing attack. For the year they are ranked 86th against the pass, having been torched by CMU (36/58 394 3/0), ECU (43/65 413 5/0) and even Army's Trent Steelman, generally considered the worst passer in America (11/20 140 2/0). SDSU is a lot better than those guys in the passing game, and they have a good run game to boot. Also, remember that Aztec coach Brady Hoke handled Navy pretty easily a couple years ago when he was at Ball State with much weaker defensive takent than he has now. I just think that Navy is going to have a hard time, especially on defense with what looks to be the best team they will play this year.
5. @Hawaii -10 v Tulsa: As usual, Hawaii gets to play a home game for it's bowl. Hawaii is 10-3..they've had a really nice year. They are the top passing team in the country yardage wise, and they are matched up with Tulsa, who is ranked 119th out of 120 teams in passing yards against. I don't see any scenario where Hawaii doesn't throw at will on Tulsa. Now obviously, this spread isn't out of control, and that's because Tulsa is no slouch on offense themselves. However, Hawaii has one of the best defenses that they've had in a long time, actually ranking 20th overall in yards per play nationwide. They've really been dominant if you look at their whole body of work, and the WAC this year was comparable to CUSA. Hawaii proved itself by beating Nevada and holding that rushing attack to only 293 yards of total offense. If you take away the prison raping they took at Boise, they've averaged 520 yards and given up 311, a whopping 200+ difference that's about as good as anyone in the country. Tulsa has a sizable advantage in the return games, but if Hawaii can just hold their own in that area, they should be in very good shape to cover this one. I think they'll be in the 50s for sure.
6. FIU +2 v Toledo: This is a total shit game, but FIU looks like a better team to me. They're probably getting points because they went 6-6 while Toldo was 8-4, but you could make a case that FIU played a much tougher schedule, and I think the Sun Belt is probably a step up as far as speed from the MAC. Troy showed that when the hammered Ohio a couple days ago in whatever bowl it was that they played in. FIU has done ok in games against bowl opponents, having hung close with Texas A&M, Maryland(outgained and should have beat them) and Pitt(not as bad as the final score indicated. They also badly outgained Rutgers and blew out another SunBelt bowl team Troy at Troy. At the end of the day, I just think that we'll see a pretty solid speed difference in this game, even though Toledo has some good players on offense. I'll take the points here.
That's it for now. I'll have some more in the coming days. Merry Christmas to everyone.
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