| South Carolina, Vanderbilt Open SEC Play |
|
|
|
The SEC gets the spotlight to itself Thursday as South Carolina visits Vanderbilt to open the conference season. The top half of the league is once again brutal with teams like Florida, LSU, Georgia, and Alabama looking like real contenders in Week One. While Vanderbilt looks again to be the conference doormat, Steve Spurrier is trying to get his Gamecocks into the upper echelon. To do that, he and his team will need a dominant victory tonight. AccuScore projects South Carolina to win this contest comfortably as it is winning 70 percent of simulations by an average margin of more than seven points. That is nearly a field goal less than the spread of 10 points that the Gamecocks are giving up however. AccuScore numbers put the chances of South Carolina winning by double digits (and thus covering) at just over 47 percent. More than 22 percent of simulations are being decided by four points or less. This tells me that while South Carolina is clearly the superior team, there is a decent chance Vanderbilt can keep this game close. This is likely due to the poor offense for South Carolina. Last week quarterback Tommy Beecher was horrendous which led to the switch to Chris Smelley. If Smelley can duplicate his performance from a week ago, he should help his team outperform the current projected numbers. Vanderbilt won last week for the first time since last October 27. The Commodores topped Miami of Ohio behind the strength of quarterback Chris Nickson. He showed off his skills as a dual threat running for a career-high 166 yards and two touchdowns while also throwing for a score. Nickson will find the Gamecock defense a much stiffer challenge as he is projected for just 160 yards of total offense, and more turnovers than scores. The one area Vanderbilt can keep the game close is on defense. The Commodores are creating nearly five sacks per simulation and forcing almost three turnovers. That is offset by the offense giving up 2.5 turnovers of its own. If Vandy can just play solid football and hold onto the ball, it may have a shot to keep the game close going into the fourth quarter. As the UCLA win over Tennessee proved, if you can keep a game within striking distance late in the game, anything can happen. Trackback(0)
Comments (0)
 Write comment
|
Jonathan Lee AccuScore Analyst
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|