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POINSETTIA BOWL
TCU VS BOISE STATE
12/23/08
It’s not often you’ll find a 10-2 team taking on a 12-0 team in a college Bowl Game in December. But that’s what we’ll get Tuesday Night as Boise State takes on TCU. Either one of these teams would be worthy of playing any of the teams playing on New Years Day this year. Matter of fact, both of these teams would probably beat most of the teams playing on that day.
With Boise State, the knock is going to be strength of Schedule. Yeah, they are 12-0, but who did they play? Perhaps their 37-32 win over Oregon early in the year was their toughest Game. The only other team to come close was Nevada in a Game in which Boise won 41-34. But one could argue that both the Oregon and Nevada Games weren’t as close as they seemed. Boise let both of those Games by 20 points at the half. As far as the week Schedule, that’s exactly what everyone said in 2007 when they took on Oklahoma and pulled a shocker in one of the most memorable bowl Games ever. The Boise program has already proven in can recruit kids that can compete with the big boys.
TCU played a tougher Schedule no doubt but they also had their share of cupcakes. They beat a pretty good BYU team 32-7. They lost a close one to Utah 13-10, and lost to Oklahoma 35-10. That 35-10 loss to Oklahoma is actually an impressive showing. When you consider that Oklahoma scored 60+ points in 5 straight Games and 49 or more on all the rest with the exception of the Texas Game, where they also scored 35, it tells you TCU can play some defense. They also held Oklahoma to just 25 yards rushing in that Game, their lowest of the year.
If you take a look at the numbers both of these teams put up this year, they are both fantastic. Both have fantastic yards per point numbers which place them among the nations best using those numbers. Both are positive in turn over ratio. We mentioned Boise’s two close Games. If you take away the two TCU losses, no one else came close to them either. So both teams not only won all year, they won big and dominated.
It would be easy to make a case for either side here. There’s not much to pick apart with either team. But ultimately we feel the differeNCe in this Game will be the TCU defense. As we mentioned above, they held Oklahoma to their lowest point total all year at 35 and remember, that was a home Game for Oklahoma. Other than Oklahoma, no other team they faced all year scored more than 14 points on them. Boise had similar success but still GAve up 32 to Oregon and 41 to Nevada. TCU scored 40 or more 6 times this year. They’ll get their points here. We’re not so sure Boise will.
We suspect Boise money will show up on Game day which will bring this line down a bit. You should be able to get -2.5 or better before kick off. We’ll side with the team that’s played the tougher opposition and the team with one of the top defensive units in the country in what figures to be one heck of a Game. This one goes to TCU.
TCU -3 OVER BOISE ST
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