Early early NCAAF Lines thread

[iggymcfly]

Yeah, we usually wait until Sunday here, but I was up and I felt like putting up some predictions:

Northwestern at Illinois -10
Duke at Notre Dame -7.5
Ohio State -4 at Michigan
West Virginia -3 at Cincinnatti
Boston College at Clemson -7
Kentucky at Georgia -4.5
Oregon -16.5 at Arizona?
Hawaii -10 at Nevada?

The Hawaii and Nevada lines in particular are really hard to figure. I'd put a fair line on Hawaii/Nevada under a TD, but the public seems to love to bet up Hawaii and I'm not how big of an adjustment there will be for that here. Oregon should be favored by 20 according to Sagarin, but they probably aren't quite as good as that number would indicate. I could see this opening anywhere from 14 to 18.5.

Edit: I completely forgot about the Brennan injury. If he's questionable for Friday, we probably won't even see a line until Wednesday. If he's out, I'd put a fair line at Nevada -3.

[pirateboy]

Vandy @ Tennessee -12 ?

[internetdonk]

Colt from Hawaii suffered what appears to be a concussion... Watch out for the Hawaii line..

[bills217]

Kentucky/UGA line is WAYYYYYY too low imo...details later

edit: and lol at me accidentally bumping this thread - oh well [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[iggymcfly]

Well, I didn't count matchups in. I guess Georgia is a little more of a running team and UK's run defense is pretty bad. Still though, South Carolina and Tennessee had bad run defenses too and Georgia lost to both of them. I think that's worth a point at the most. Maybe add another point for Little (even though he's probably no less healthy than average this week) and I could see 6.5, but no higher.

That's not even my fair line either. I added a point into it for the public perception that Georgia's a lot better than Kentucky when they're only about 1 point apart talent-wise as far as I can see.

[bills217]

6 weeks ago I would have had this at PK, even at UGA, but UGA and UK are both playing like totally different teams than they were then.

A friend of mine and I were kicking around the spread for this game and we initially thought 8.5, although maybe we are overreacting too much to recent results (which is what the public does). I could probably get on board w/ 6.5, although my gut would still be with UGA there.

No one really knows the extent of Little's injury yet. After seeing the beginning of the Vandy game with him healthy, I think we missed him more than I thought - he is an unbelievable receiver out of the backfield - very sure hands and able to make plays out of nothing as a safety valve when Woodson gets in trouble (which this week was often). The drop-off from him to Locke/Dixon (Dixon has also been hurt, who knows if he will play v. UGA) as far as running the ball is not much, but Little changes the game as a receiver.

Locke is going to be a star btw. How did all those Big 12 schools not recruit him? I don't know where UK would be had they redshirted him.

Another thing you have to consider is that UK is hindered a lot in noisy environments on the road because the offense requires Woodson to call the play/audibilize at the line of scrimmage on about 80% of plays.

[iggymcfly]

I don't buy that. It was less than a month ago that Kentucky beat LSU. Then they lost to Florida in a very difficult game they weren't expected to win (missed covering by like a point) and had a letdown the following week vs. MSU. They played fine against Vanderbilt last week (covered by 3) so really the only game where they played badly was when they were in a textbook letdown situation. I think UK's still a Top 15 team.