Penn State
vs.
Temple
College Football
Pick with Analysis
9/5/15
Temple will host Penn State on Saturday at 3:30 pm est. in a Game that can be seen on ESPN. Penn State opened at -7 at 5 dimes back in July and has hovered around -7 and -6.5 since. Currently there is a mix of -6.5’s and -7’s on the board. The current total is 41. For those interested in betting percentages, Penn State has drawn more than 70% of the wagers thus far.
Certainly there’s a class difference here. Temple has only beaten Penn State 3 times and the last time that happened was 1941. The majority of the scores in this series have been very lopsided, obviously in favor of the Nittany Lions.
However, there’s reason to believe that Temple can compete here. They have closed the talent gap over the last few years and the recent scores in this series back that up. In 2010 it was 22-13. In 2011 the Scorewas 14-10. 2012 saw a 24-13 Scoreand last years final of 30-13 is a bit deceiving. The Game was tied 6-6 late in the 3rd but Temple handed the Lions the Game by turning the ball over on 4 straight possessions which Penn State capitalized on.
Both teams returned very healthy numbers on both sides of the ball which enables us to dabble with Our Score Prediction model. We used 3 different sets of parameters here, the first being full season data, the 2nd using the last 7 Games and the 3rd using the last 4 Games only. The scores that the model spit out were 14-13, 10-9 and 14-10. A close low scoring Game in all 3 scenarios.
We’re looking for Temple NOT to turn the ball over Saturday and once again take this Game into the 4th quarter close. If they can do that, we like Our chances with +7 in Our back pocket. Temple +7