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Las Vegas Bowl Odds: Arizona vs. BYU Football Picks

Written December 17, 2008 by Jason Lowry

Arizona BYU Football

When the #17 BYU Cougars take on the Arizona Wildcats this weekend in the Las Vegas Bowl, it will be the first ranked team to play in a bowl game this year. BYU finished the season with an impressive 10-2 overall mark, and were solid in Mountain West finishing 3rd at 6-2. As for the Wildcats they were only able to manage just a 7-5 season, but its the first time they have been in a bowl game since 1998. Now BYU seems to own the Las Vegas Bowl, as this will be the 4th straight year they have played in this bowl game, and in the last two games they beat Oregon and UCLA out of the Pac-10, so it doesn’t look all the promising for the Wildcats. Those of you looking to do a little NCAA football betting on the game this might find it a bit surprising that, Arizona comes 3 point favorites over the Cougars of BYU at Sportsbook.com

Now its a little hard to figure out just why the Wildcats come into this one as the favorites, but for the Cougars I am pretty sure they could care less who is picked to win the game before it is even played. The Cougars offense is locked and loaded, and has all the weapons needed to put up a ton of points, as quarterback Max Hall was electric at times this season, including a game against UCLA where he threw for 7 touchdowns. Hall finished the season throwing for 3,629 yards with 34 scoring tosses to just 13 interceptions, as he completed nearly 70% of his passes, while spreading the ball around to guys like star receivers Austin Collie and Dennis Pitta, who both had over 1,000 yards receiving, but Collie was the big playmaker grabbing 15 touchdown passes. The Cougars also have a pretty steady running attack with Harvey Unga who had 1,061 yards and 10 scores on the ground. Its hard telling how the offense will translate against a big conference school, but we think it could be a very dangerous situation for the Wildcats.

Now the Cougars defense has given up some high point totals this season, including 48 to Utah, but for the whole year this team allowed just 21.2 points a game, so you have to think this defense is at least capable of coming out with a strong performance. Now the Cougars didn’t play the best of competition this season and failed to win the big games against TCU and Utah, but overall its hard to complain about a 10 win season no matter how you go that point. Bet BYU Cougars +3 at Sportsbook.com

Now we already mentioned the Wildcats haven’t seen post season action in a decade, but they did come away from that game with a win. Now you have to think that the team is really going to be hyped up for this one, as a chance like this doesn’t come around often for the Wildcats in football, and if they are going to bring home a victory they are going to need a strong performance from an offense that comes in ranked 16th in the nation at 37.1 points a game. Quarterback Willie Tuitama had a great start to the season, throwing 13 of his 21 touchdown strikes in the first 5 games, so maybe he can snap out of it for a big game this weekend. The majority of the offense will likely come from running game where Nic Grigsby and Keola Antolin combined to run for 22 touchdowns this season, while Grigsby did the majority of the work running for 1,066 yards.

The defense for the Wildcats had a couple games where they struggled, but overall this unit was what kept this team from falling apart and not getting the number of wins needed. The strength of this unit is the pass defense, as they are highly ranked in a number of categories, including 14th nationally in passing yards allowed, as they are giving up just 170 yards a game. Now that could be the reason this team comes in as the favorite, cause if they can stop the passing attack of the Cougars you have to really like this teams chances of bringing home a victory. Bet Arizona Wildcats -3 at Sportsbook.com

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