Sorry for the time away my friends. End of year is the busiest time for me at that regular job of mine. I’ve still been putting out picks to subscribers, but haven’t had time to do much writing. That should change after next week as we start diving even more into college basketball.
For Bowl season I’ve decided to put out a play for every single game. For games I wouldn’t normally play or leans those will come out as 1 Unit plays. For games I have already bet or I feel there is a bigger edge on, you’ll see those as multi-unit plays. You can get all my premium plays here at Theoddsbreakers. We started Bowl season 2-0 on Friday night.
We’ve got 6 games coming up on Saturday. I’m going to focus in on the first where Western Kentucky taking on Appalachian State. Both teams dropped their conference championships coming into the Bowl game with UTSA beating WKU 49-41 and ULL dropping App St. 24-16.
App State’s offense was on a roll before running into Louisiana. Outside of ULL since September 18th, App State has averaged 41.1 points per game. Top receiving threat Corey Sutton will be out for this game, but QB Clemson transfer Chase Brice has spread the ball around well this year to his top three receivers with them having 61,55 and 51 catches. Reciever Thomas Hennigan is third in active career receptions with 237 and someone will step up and become that third option. On the ground they have a two-pronged attack in Nate Noel (5.5 ypc) and Camerun Peoples (5.4 ypc) who should run wild against WKU’s front seven and their 98th ranked defense in rushing success. During WKU’s 7 game win streak before the conference championship game the Hilltoppers held opponents to 18.9ppg. Much like App State offense had an Achilles heel so did the WKU defense. That 7 game win streak was book ended by UTSA where they gave up 50.5 ppg to them and their potent offensive attack. The WKU defense will need to continue to force turnovers to keep App St. from gliding down the field every possession.
When WKU has the ball they will get to revel in one more game of Offensive coordinator Zach Kittley’s offense. They won’t run much unless they’re up late, but that’s because QB Bailey Zappe has turned this offense into his own after coming on board with Kittley from Houston Baptist. Riding the scheme and his talented arm strength the Hilltopper’s signal caller comes into the leading the country with 5,545 yards passing and 56 TDs. They come in #1 in the nation in passing success and while App St hasn’t been a slouch on defense, ranking in the top 20 in both scoring and total defense, they haven’t seen a passing attack like WKU. Their defense is led by Sun Belt player of the year D’marco Jackson and a solid front seven that has racked up 108 tackles for loss on the year good for second in the country. They’ll need every one of them to slow down WKU.
This is a game where I don’t think either team lacks motivation. Both teams want to rebound from losing in the conference championship game and dropping a second game in a season to the same team (ULL and UTSA). WKU and Zappe have some historic marks within their reach. He is 289 Passing yards and 5 TDs away from setting single season FBS records. They’ll be throwing early and often trying to get his name in the record books. I give a slight edge to App St. here also as I think they’ll be the defense that gets the most straight stops, but it won’t be enough to keep this game from having both teams push towards 40 points or more.
Gimme over 66.5 for 2.5 Units
