Friday doesn’t usually give us marquee CFB matchups, but this week is the exception! Here are 2 College Football Best Bets for Friday, September 22. Good luck!
Best Bet: Wisconsin -5.5 over Purdue (FanDuel)
The Badges sit at 2-1 through their 1st 3 games of the season. They won both home games against Buffalo and Georgia Southern but lost their lone road game to Washington State.
Trailing 14-7 early in the 3rd quarter last week, Wisconsin turned things around. They went on to score 28 unanswered points and won the game 35-14 and covered the 20 points spread. All 5 Badger touchdowns came on the ground.
Braelon Allen led the way with 94 yards and 2 touchdowns. Tanner Mordecai has not been great under center but has used his legs to make things happen. He also picked up 2 touchdowns on the ground last week. They forced a season-high 6 turnovers from Georgia Southern and committed none themselves.
Purdue is only 1-2 early on after losing 35-20 to Syracuse last week. Their lone win came over Virginia Tech the week prior 24-17. Hudson Card completed almost 70% of his passes for over 300 yards and a touchdown to go with his 1 interception.
Abdur-Rahmaan Yaseen grabbed 10 receptions for 114 yards in this one. They struggled against the Syracuse rushing attack which yielded over 270 yards on the ground. They also turned the ball over 4 times in the loss.
Wisconsin has not made things look pretty, but they are handling business in an ugly way. The defense of the Badgers should be able to neutralize Card and the Boilermaker offense. Mordecai is due for a breakout game but we believe it will be the rushing game that lifts the Badgers to victory here on the road by double-digits.
Key Trends:
- Wisconsin is 9-0 ATS in their last 9 games when playing on the road against Purdue.
- Wisconsin is 8-3 ATS in their last 11 games played in week 4.
- Purdue is 0-6 ATS in their last 6 games at home.
- Purdue is 1-4 ATS in their last 5 games.
Best Bet: Virginia +9.5 over NC State (DraftKings)
The 2-1 Wolfpack bounced back easily against Virginia Military Academy last week after falling to Notre Dame the week prior. They did trail ND by just a touchdown heading into the 4th before Sam Hartman put them away with 21 more points.
Last week, Brennan Armstrong, former Cavalier, went for 260 yards, completed over 84% of his passes, and connected with Demarcus Jones II for his lone score. The run game was special and went for over 230 yards while they also converted on 10 of their 14 3rd downs. Defensively, they held VMA to just 15 yards on the ground and 1 of 10 on 3rd down.
Virginia has begun this season with no bang. They faced #12 Tennessee in the opener and Maryland last week. They lost both by a total of 91-27. They did play James Madison competitively but still lost 36-35. All 3 games showed that Virginia cannot really stop the run and if they did a bit, then the passing game took over.
Anthony Colandrea has been terrible at running the offense. He is barely completing over 60% of his passes and has thrown more interceptions (4), than touchdowns (3).
Fishy fishy fishy. This line just does not make sense to us. Virginia has been terrible and NCST has been solid, yet this line is single digits in some books.
Much like Coastal Carolina, the public is heavy both in number of tickets and amount of money on NCST, yet the line is staying still for the most part. We believe this game is a trap and NCST is going to overlook UVA completely.
Key Trends:
- NCST is 2-11 ATS in their last 13 games.
- NCST is 5-16 ATS in their last 21 games on the road.
- UVA is 4-2 ATS in their last 6 games against an opponent in the Atlantic Division division.
- UVA is 5-2 ATS in their last 7 games played in week 4.
