Saturday college football and we will see the Syracuse Orange take on the Central Michigan Chippewas at Kelly/ Shorts Stadium in Mount Pleasant, Michigan. The game has a start time of 12:00 pm (Eastern) and will be televised on ESPNews. Current Vegas odds have the Orange listed as 5 point favorites, while the total is set at 52.
Analysis: The Syracuse Orange come in at 1-0 on the year, but that win was a tough one as they needed overtime to beat FCS foe Villanova. The Cuse were really lucky to get the win as they were outplayed on both sides of the ball and outgained by 59 yards on the day. Syracuse struggled offense, putting up just 320 yards of offense, including 184 yards through the air. A bright spot for the Syracuse offense was Prince- Tyson Gulley, who ran for 100 yards and 1 TD on 15 carries. The defense wasn’t all that bad as they allowed just 389 yards on the day and just 3.2 yards per rush, but they also couldn’t get off the field on 3rd downs, allowing the Cats to hit 60% of their third down attempts. The Orange are 13-2-1 ATS in their last 16 games vs the MAC Conference.
The Central Michigan Chippewas have had a nice start to their year as they are 2-0 in the early going, which includes a 21 point win at Purdue last week. This is a very experienced team that will make hay in the MAC this year, so beating a lower level Big 10 team is no big surprise. The game though was allot closer in the stats, as both teams had 19 FDs and the Chipps outgained the Boilers by just 7 yards. The difference was the fact that Purdue turned the ball over 3 times to CMU’s 1 and Purdue also had 7 penalties to just 1 for the Chippewas. The Star for Central Michigan in the game was RB Thomas Rawls, who had 155 yards rushing and 2 TDs in the game. Rawls leads the team in rushing so far with 278 yards are 3 TDs. The Chippewas are ranked 110th in total offense (328 ypg) and 74th in scoring (29 ppg), while on defense they are 31st in yards allowed (291 ypg) and 34th in points allowed (16.5 ppg).
Pick: I will go with the Chippewas in this one. In looking over Central Michigan to begin the year I had this team pegged as one that I will follow this year. This is a team that went just 6-6 last year, but they are a very experienced team with all 11 starters back on offense and 8 back on defense. The Chipps will be taking on a Syracuse team that needed double OT to beat FCS foe Villanova. The Cuse are a very experienced team as well, but have never been a good road team and they do have a tough 4 game stretch coming up vs Maryland, Notre Dame, Florida State and Louisville. I look for the Chippewas to use the momentum from last weeks 21 point road win over Purdue to win this game outright.
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