College Football Predictions: Tulane vs. Army Preview

Written by Jake Thompson
Saturday, 01 October 2011 02:10

We’ll preview the Tulane vs. Army early college football game with predictions on the final score.

Saturday’s college football between the Tulane Green Wave (2-2) and the Army Black Knights (1-3) has a start time of 12:00 PM ET and will be shown live on the CBS Sports Network.  We’ll preview what both squads have done and what they are capable of doing before releasing our predictions on the final score at the end of this article.

Legends Sportsbook has the Tulane vs. Army odds favoring the Black Knights at -7, with the total set at over or under 53.  Army is garnering close to 70% of tracked college football bets at that line, while the Black Knights grabbed a 41-23 road win during last year’s clash against Tulane.  The Green Wave were 17-16 road winners as 6-point underdogs the year before, and the road team has snagged wins in all 3 matchups since 2008.

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Army lost 26-49 at Northern Illinois to start the season, and then stretched to 0-2 in a 20-23 home loss against San Diego State.  The Black Knights pulled the upset 21-14 win over Northwestern before falling 21-48 at Ball State last time out.  Tulane took out Southern Louisiana 47-33 in their season opener before falling 3-31 at home against Tulsa.  The Green Wave rebounded with a 49-10 win over UAB as 12-point underdogs before losing 27-48 at Duke most recently.

Tulane has a balanced offense that has passed for 246.0 yards while adding another 125.5 per game on the ground.  The Green Wave’s ability to mix it up makes it tough for opposing defenses to stop the offense, and it doesn’t look like Army will have the answer.  The Black Knights are allowing 413.8 total yards per game while giving up 5.0 yards per carry.

Army’s offense runs for 372.2 yards per game, but it has turned that production into only 22.0 points per game.  The Black Knights don’t even try to pass for the most part and their rush-based attack is hard for some teams to deal with.  Tulane’s defense is only allowing 3.5 yards per carry but they’ve shown issues with defending the pass.  Although it might appear that the Green Wave’s weakness is against the pass, they could just as easily give up 300+ rushing yards here.

Although Army won by 18 in last year’s meeting with Tulane, it should be noted that the total yardage was extremely close.  Tulane is getting strong quarterback play from Ryan Griffin (906 yards, 57.6%, 7 TD, 2 INT) and I think the Green Wave can win this game outright if they avoid costly turnovers.  The offense looks set to move the ball and Army sometimes is it's own worst enemy inside the red zone.  Even if Tulane doesn’t score a ton of points, Army’s ability to run for 5 yards a carry will grind clock and keep the score close.  That means that Tulane is the play here, and it wouldn’t shock me if we see an upset.

Tulane vs. Army Score Predictions:

Tulane 24

Army 27