Friday, Nov. 2nd
Conference USA
8:00pm ET / 5:00pm PT
#317-318
WESTERN KENTUCKY HILLTOPPERS @ MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE BLUE RAIDERS
2** Play on: OVER THE TOTAL
Get your pay in ASAP. The OU line for this Conference USA Friday night battle between the HILLTOPPERS and BLUE RAIDERS opened at 51 points. As we type our writeup on Wednesday afternoon, its already risen to 53 points. With a couple of 400+ yard defenses taking on each other, we should have no sweat getting to a combined 60 or more points in this game. Our database models point to a final score right around 37 to 24…
It's not been lost on us that this has indeed been a very high-scoring series. WESTERN KENTUCKY and MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE have played each other six times over the last seven seasons. And ALL SIX of those meetings have gone OVER the TOTAL (6-0 O/U). Average OU line: 61.9… Average combined points: 79.2. That’s not a misprint. EVERY game in this series has tallied 63 or more combined points. And the average game has gone OVER by an unreal margin of +17.3 points per game.
We certainly acknowledge that consistent offensive points have been a difficulty for Western Kentucky this season (only 19.8 ppg). But they’re up to 25.5 ppg in their last two conference games. They’ve gone 3-1 o/U in CONFERENCE play this season. And we will basically only need about 21 or more points out of the Hilltoppers this week for our OVER to cash. This is the perfect defense to achieve that modest goal. MTSU actually has a worse defense than Western Kentucky, allowing 420 yards per game so far this year. The Hilltopper’s BEST ‘Over’ numbers have been: (a) 18-6-2 O/U in their last 26 games versus WINNING (> .500) opponents… and (b) In these rare FRIDAY games, they have gone 6-1 O/U.
For the hosts, veteran QB Brent Stockstill has been very efficient on offense this season. he just threw for 280 yards last week in the big win over Old Dominion. A game in which the Blue Raiders out up a gaudy 51 points (and the game went OVER by a TD). They even took their feet off the gas in the 4th quarter after getting out to a 45-10 lead after three quarters. The surprising aspect is that they were actually OUT-YARDED in that game. Old Dominion had 529 yards of total offense... despite the fact that they lost by a score of 51 to 17. That bodes well for Western Kentucky to get THEIR yards and points this week. So we could have no problem with the Blue Raiders getting to 37 or more points. After all, Western Kentucky has allowed 37+ points on defense on each of their last three games. From a team TREND perspective, we close with the fact that MTSU has gone 9-1-1 O/U after scoring 40 > points in their previous game.