The 2012 Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl will take place on Saturday and we will see the TCU Horned Frogs take on the Michigan State Spartans in Tempe, Arizona. The game is scheduled for a 10:15 PM (Eastern) start time and it will be televised live on ESPN. Currently the odds for the game have TCU favored by 3 points, while the total sits at 40.5. Check out Sportsbook Spy to find out what side the Public is taking on all today's games.
Free Analysis: Formerly the Insight Bowl and the Copper Bowl, this event has pitted many a team from the Big Ten Conference against a school representing the Big 12. This year, the team coming out of the latter league is the TCU Horned Frogs, led by head coach Gary Patterson who figured to have his hands full with the transition from the Mountain West Conference to one of the BCS groups that has long been established as a hotbed for college football supremacy. The Frogs started off the 2012 campaign with four straight wins and victories in five of the first six contests, but then problems off the field forced coach Patterson to go with an unproven commodity at quarterback in Trevone Boykin, and the struggles began midway through the month of October. TCU ended up losing four of its final six games, beating only West Virginia and Texas, both on the road, by a combined eight points. On the offense, the loss of quarterback Casey Pachall was devastating because he started out so well after a strong 2011 campaign. Coach Patterson brought in Boykin to save the day and while there were plenty of rough patches, the youngster survived by hitting 58.6 percent of his pass attempts for 15 touchdowns, but also 9 interceptions. Josh Boyce and Brandon Carter stand as the most productive receivers for the group with a combined 95 grabs for close to 1,400 yards and 13 scores. On defense the top performer for the squad had to be Devonte Fields who was not only named the AP Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year, but also a unanimous selection by the coaches as the Defensive Freshman of the Year in the conference. Fields appeared in all 12 games for the Frogs, registering 49 total stops, but what made him so special was where many of those tackles took place as he recorded team highs with 17.5 tackles for loss and 9 sacks. The youngster also caused a couple of fumbles for a group that finished tied for 38th in the nation and third in the Big 12 in turnover margin (plus-0.42 per contest).
As for the Spartans, they began the season with a bang, taking down nationally-ranked Boise State at home in a 17-13 final, the first of three wins in the first four contests, but like the Horned Frogs, MSU and head coach Mark Dantonio also made a wrong turn in October and subsequently dropped four of their final six decisions. On Nov. 24, the Spartans took out Minnesota in the Big Ten finale, 26-10, in order to earn the all-important sixth win of the campaign. Needless to say, finishing 3-5 in league play was not what the Spartans set out for in late August. Michigan State quarterback Andrew Maxwell is capable of managing games from the standpoint that he is more likely to play conservatively than he is to take chances with his passes down the field. In fact, in four of the final six games of the regular season the signal-caller threw for fewer than 200 yards. At running back, the Spartans feature not only one of the top performers in the conference but in the nation, as Le'Veon Bell averaged 137.3 ypg to rank third in the country. With more than half of his 1,648 yards generated after contact, Bell is not someone who goes down easy and will need to have several TCU defenders swarm to him when he has the ball. Averaging close to five yards per carry, Bell scored all but one of the team's 12 rushing TDs. If the overall season stats for the MSU defense are any indication, Boyce, Carter and Boykin will be hard-pressed to come up with significant yardage in this meeting. The pass defense for the Spartans was third-best in the Big Ten, and ninth in the country overall, allowing just 173.7 ypg, and because of that the group permitted just 273.3 ypg of total offense (fourth in the country) and a mere 16.3 ppg (10th nationally). Doing a considerable amount of damage for the MSU defense was linebacker Max Bullough who led the team in tackles (102) and tied for the lead in TFL (12), as he was named a semifinalist for the Butkus Award and a First-Team All-Big Ten performer by the league's coaches.
Free Pick: I like the Under in this one. This game really has the feel of an old fashioned Big 10 defensive battle. Offensively the Spartans are very weak this year as they are 90th overall and 109th in scoring (20.9 ppg), but it is not their offense that has got them in a bowl game, but their defense, The Spartan defense comes in ranked 4th in the nation overall, 8th vs the pass, 8th vs the run and 9th in points allowed (16.3 ppg). This is a very balanced defense and they needed to be as their offense just has no punch. TCU this year was in the offensive minded Big 12 this year, so their offensive numbers are up there at 29.3 ppg and 393 ypg, but this team has very good defensive numbers for a team that played in a conference where teams started scoring the moment they get off the bus. TCU ranks 18th in total defense and 34th in points allowed (23.1 ppg). We Also note that TCU is 10th in the nation vs run, allowing 104 ypg and 3.3 ypg, and that is Michigan State’s primary method of moving the ball. Both teams will have trouble moving the ball on these defenses in a game that just has the feel of a 17-14 final.
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