West Virginia will once again be the beast from the Big East. The Mountaineers finished the 2005 season going 10-2 and right behind Louisville with the best overall conference record. Expectations are high once again as West Virginia has everything go its way. Quarterback Pat White will be the man for the Mountaineers this season as he put together a wonder season last year in leading the Mountaineers to their best record since 2001. Expect to see a lot more scoring from the Mountaineers as they finished second in the Big East with an average scoring offense. The one thing that has to happen for the Mountaineers is that they must stop the run, the one part of their offense that held teams to weaknesses last season. The Mountaineers finished the 2005 season going 10th in the country in scoring offense and that average will be higher once again.
Notre Dame passed the test against the Big East by shutting out the conference’s second-ranked team, but the Fighting Irish were not a completely dominating team. Notre Dame did lead the Irish by 17 points, but give the Fighting Irish some credit for coming back after being down big in the 4th quarter at Georgia. However, being a favorite in this game could be problematic for Notre Dame. West Virginia is 14-4 ATS when getting between 3.5 and 10 points and the Mountaineers are confident that they will be in position to score in the fourth quarter.
Boise State passed the test against the Wolverines as the Broncos jumped out to a 14-3 lead before the Wolverines netted the victory on a by-two touchdown driven. Most of the credit has to go to Michigan State as the Spartans outgained the Broncos 394- à Rated gross margin of victory of 53. In fact, if the Mountaineers had not won, they would have most likely lost the game by the combined 40 points. That would have been disastrous for Boise as they would have fallen to 4-4 (2-5 ATS), which also would have meant a fall from grace with national recognition.
Most books have the Boise State Broncos as large 16.5 point favorites as they are coming off a bye week. Many experts think the spread will not be very good, perhaps Worse even as the Broncos are a huge home favorite. The oddsmakers are employing the “Wildcat Effect” that occurred last season when the underdog covered the spread against the closing line.
There are a handful of games where the spread margin was so lopsided it was not even worthy of being discussed. Most notable of these were Fresno State at Nevada and Utah at BYU. Both games were very one-sided and both were very rare. Fresno State won 22-3, scoring over 42 points. BYU won 27-3, missing the final score by a wide margin. Nevada was favored by 10 points and won by exactly 10 points.
Another interesting game to consider was Georgia at South Carolina. While the Gamecocks are expected to get back in momentum after a disappointing 2006 season, the Bulldogs are the hotter team in the SEC heading into this one. Unlike South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, who has been down in the dumps following the Gamecocks’ surprising loss to Texas A&M, Georgia was a huge favorite against LSU in Baton Rogue. The Bulldogs won by 20 points!
Some college Panen138 teams are certainly worth more than others as we went over the favorites to cover every game last week. Tuesday I went with Iowa for a second straight road cover, beating the Spartans by the score of 53-24. Iowa now hosts Minnesota this week. Beat the bettors!