College Football Predictions: UCF vs. BYU Preview

Written by Jake Thompson
Thursday, 22 September 2011 17:22

Friday’s college football preview of the game between BYU and UCF is next up for our predictions.

The UCF Knights (2-1) will be the road team for Friday’s game against the BYU Cougars (1-2), and our preview should help make sense of this matchup.  The UCF vs. BYU start time is set for 8:00 PM ET, and you’ll want to tune-in to ESPN to catch the college football action unfold.

BYU impressed in their season-opening 14-13 road win at Mississippi, but things haven’t gone well since that point.  The Cougars dropped a close 16-17 road loss to Texas as 7.5-point underdogs before getting destroyed 10-54 in a rivalry game at home against Utah.  Turnovers have been a big problem for BYU so far this season and they’ll have to tighten things up if they hope to get past UCF on Friday.

The Knights looked strong in 62-0 and 30-3 wins over Charleston Southern and Boston College, respectively, but showed they still have some problems themselves in a 10-17 road loss to Florida International last time out.  UCF was a 6.5-point favorite in that loss and turnovers ended the perfect season despite the Knights winning the yardage battle by 62.

Legends Sportsbook opened up BYU as 3.5-point favorites for this college football game before savvy bettors took the odds down to -2.5 or -3, depending on where you look.  The total sits at 42.5 and has also been bet down a point since debuting at 43.5 earlier in the week.  Bet on the UCF vs. BYU game at Legends Sportsbook and receive a 25% cash bonus just for using our link to get started.

The Knights run for 223.3 per game while throwing for another 204.0 yards each time out.  The one thing you need to do to slow down the UCF offense is take away their rushing attack, and BYU doesn’t look like they’ll be able to accomplish that.  The Cougars have faced some strong offensive lines en route to giving up 157.3 rushing yards per game, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that they are beatable in that area.

BYU hasn’t been able to run the ball at all (48.3 yards a game on 1.9 a carry), and it doesn’t figure to get any easier against a UCF defense that allows just 72.3 rushing yards a game.  The Cougars have been far too reliant on their passing attack, and quarterback Jake Heaps (722 yards, 57.1%, 3 TD, 4 INT) is simply not making strong enough decisions to sustain an offense that way.  He has a great arm but it’s starting to become a reality that his inexperience will prevent BYU from scoring a ton of points against strong defenses this season.

Although the Cougars are going to improve as the season progresses, I just don’t think they are going to get by UCF here.  The Knights are better on both sides of the ball and BYU simply makes too many mistakes to realistically win games against the better teams on their schedule.  We rode Utah against BYU last week and will fade the Cougars once again this time around.

UCF vs. BYU Score Predictions:

UCF 24

BYU 20