Louisville vs. Cincinnati Football Betting Odds & Spread

Written November 11, 2008 by Jason Lowry

Editors Note: Jason Lowry has his NCAA BLOCKBUSTER GAME OF THE WEEK going in the Louisville Cincinnati game this Friday.

Big East football will be in action this week, as the Louisville Cardinals look to avenge a beating by Pittsburgh last week 41-7 when they host the newly ranked No. 22 Cincinnati Bearcats, who went on the road last week, and upset then No.20 West Virginia 26-23 in overtime. Now Louisville is 1-3 in conference play, and are still looking for that 6th win to make them Bowl eligible. The Bearcats on the other hand are tied with West Virginia and Pittsburgh at 3-1, as these 3 teams will battle it out to see who gets the BCS bid. The oddsmakers are thinking Bearcats in this one, as Cincinnati comes in 3 point favorites on the road over the Cardinals at BetUS.com

For the Bearcats its pretty simple if they want to win the division, as all they have to is win their final 4 games and their in. Last week against West Virginia the Bearcats jumped out for a 20-7 halftime lead, but were unable to score again till Kazeem Alli hauled in a 2 yard pass from Tony Pike in overtime. Pike did a lot of the damage for the Bearcats in this one, as he threw for another touchdown in regulation and had a rushing touchdown to top off his solid performance. Now it doesn’t really go in the offensive stat books but the Bearcats got a great start to this game, as Marshwan Gilyard took the opening kick back a 100 yards for a score.

Get up to 145% in Signup Bonuses at BetUS!

The Bearcats defense did a great job keeping West Virginia quarterback Pat White in check on the ground, as they held White to just 41 yards on 20 attempts. On the other hand White had a solid game through the air, as he threw for 219 yards against the Bearcats. The key to this week is making sure they keep Louisville running back Victor Alexander under check, as he the key for the Cardinals offense. This team better come to play this week on the road, or their top 25 ranking and shot at a BCS bowl game will likely be gone. Bet Cincinnati -3 at BetUS.com

Louisville has the chance to play spoiler this week and get one step closer at a shot at a bowl game this year, but they can’t expect to do that if they play like they did last week against Pittsburgh. Now the Cardinals did gain 299 yards, but when you only have one scoring drive the whole game you aren’t going to win too many football games. It doesn’t help when you have 5 turnovers including 3 costly fumbles and 2 interceptions. We already mentioned the importance of Victory Alexander who had 73 yards on just 17 carries, but you can’t keep running the football when you are getting killed. If the Cardinals play like this at home on Friday, it’s going to be another bad loss for this team.

Its pretty easy to guess that the defense didn’t have the best of days, when the other team puts 41 points on the board. It wasn’t as though the Panthers really dominated the game, as they had just 21 more yards of total offense. Now the reason for all the points is the great field position and the fact that this unit didn’t create one turnover when the offense gives up 5 is easy to see how they wound up losing this one by 34 points. Bet Louisville +3 at BetUS.com