Auburn
vs.
Miss State
College Football
Pick – Analysis
10/11/14
And just like that, this matchup could be one of the best ones of the season. Auburn was supposed to regress after last year’s championship run and Mississippi State wasn’t even supposed to be in the Top 25. Now it’s the No. 2 vs. the No. 3 team in the country right now, according to the AP Polls. The Tigers opened as -3 point road favorites at Sportsbook.ag.
Auburn is coming off a demolition of LSU 41-7. That result is a good reason why they are favored here as LSU actually competed against Mississippi State… somewhat. The Bulldogs led 31-10 at the end of three quarters in that Game, but LSU came back to make the Scorerespectable. Either way, it’s looking like LSU isn’t very good. As for Auburn, with a better defense this season, they could be a better team than a year ago. In their only road Game this year, they did have trouble at Kansas State in a lower scoring 20-14 win.
The Bulldogs maybe haven’t looked as good, but this team has definitely surprised. Their lone loss against the spread was a 47-34 win. This will be the third straight Game in which they play a Top 10 ranked team. After the seemingly dominant win against Texas A&M last weekend 48-31 (it was worse than that), Miss. State looks for real.
In this Game last season, Auburn used a last-second touchdown to win 24-20. It was early in the year before Auburn really figured out their run Game and Nick Marshall had to pass a ton. Dak Prescott ran for 133 yards and two touchdowns, but it wasn’t enough. These teams have played in hard fought Games for a while now, going back to 2008 when Auburn won 3-2.
The big test in this Game will be on the defensive side for both teams. Dak Prescott and Nick Marshall have both been huge, pushing themselves into Heisman discussions with undefeated records. Both are seniors, but Prescott probably looks the most improved.
The Bulldogs QB is now a more efficient passer completing 63.9% of his passes and already has 13 passing TDs to only 2 INTs. He has far surpassed last year’s totals. That doesn’t include on the ground where he’s rushing for almost 100 yards a Game and has 6 TDs. In addition to that, Josh Robinson has been a beast for Miss. St. in the backfield as he has 592 yards and 6 TDs as well. He’s been huge over the last two weeks.
On Auburn’s side, Marshall hasn’t looked like that much of an improved passer, but his 8 TDs and only 1 INT stand out. It’s still all about the Auburn rushing attack. Marshall has 392 yards and 4 TDs, while Cameron Artis-Payne leads the way with 594 yards and 5 TDs. This is about the time of year when Auburn took off last season and no one could stop them.
It’ll be up to each defense to step up here and it could end up falling to which QB is the better passer. Right now, that has to go to Prescott with how he’s looked. But, the Tigers have looked better on defense, keeping all of their opponents in check so far. As for the Bulldogs, they have played great early in all of their Games, but against LSU and Texas A&M kind of slowed up toward the end of the Game when the opposing team started to sling it out.
The Tigers are 10-1 ATS in their last 11 SEC Games, 16-5 ATS in their last 21 overall and 4-1 ATS in their last five road Games. The Bulldogs have covered in six straight Conference Games, are 9-1 ATS in their last 10 overall and 5-1 ATS in their last six home Games. The under has hit in seven of the last nine meetings between these schools.
With the focus generally o these two offenses it could be the defenses the shine in this one. The total is high enough to where there may be some velue in the under here. UNDER 64