{"id":4937,"date":"2018-12-26T23:49:04","date_gmt":"2018-12-26T23:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=4937"},"modified":"2018-12-28T01:52:55","modified_gmt":"2018-12-28T01:52:55","slug":"plenty-of-points-expected-as-syracuse-faces-west-virginia-in-camping-world-bowl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/ncaaf\/plenty-of-points-expected-as-syracuse-faces-west-virginia-in-camping-world-bowl\/","title":{"rendered":"Plenty Of Points Expected As Syracuse Faces West Virginia In Camping World Bowl"},"content":{"rendered":"

The middle of three college football games for Friday is expected to be one of the highest scoring as ACC entrant Syracuse takes on Big 12 member West Virginia. These are two of the best offenses at the FBS level\u2014Syracuse finished the year tied for #16 in total offense (468.8 yards per game) while West Virginia was #8 (520.4). The teams were even closer in scoring offense\u2014West Virginia ranks 9th (42.3 PPG) while Syracuse is 11th (40.8 PPG). West Virginia\u2019s passing offense was one of the best in the country ranking #3 with 358.1 yards per game. Syracuse was \u2018only\u2019 #36 (261.5 YPG) but the Orange has the better rushing attack and thus the more balanced offense. The Orange ranked #30 in rushing offense (207.3 YPG) while West Virginia finished 75th (162.3).<\/p>\n

The big storyline for this game is the status of West Virginia quarterback Will Grier. Grier was the offensive catalyst for the Mountaineers but on December 8 announced that he will skip the Camping World Bowl to prepare for the NFL Draft. Grier\u2019s 2018 season numbers are impressive: 3,864 passing yards on 37 touchdowns and only eight interceptions. Since the announcement, he\u2019s become the latest pseudo \u2018controversy\u2019 on sports talk radio. Depending on who you talk to he\u2019s either evil incarnate and everything wrong with college sports or else he\u2019s a smart guy making the best decision for himself and his family. Grier does have a wife and child so he\u2019s not in the same boat as many other top level NFL prospects. He\u2019s expected to go in the first or second round of the NFL draft so it\u2019s obvious why he doesn\u2019t want to risk what could be lifetime financial security to play in the Camping World Bowl.<\/p>\n

Grier\u2019s announcement also had significant implications for the NCAA football pointspread<\/a> on this game. The game opened with West Virginia as a -7 point favorite but since it became known that Grier won\u2019t play has moved a whopping -9 points making Syracuse a -2 point favorite. It\u2019s easy to argue that no single player is worth nine points of line value but this move isn\u2019t quite as cut and dried. West Virginia looked a bit overvalued here before Grier’s announcement. Maybe the pendulum has swung too far toward the Orange but at -2 you\u2019d expect the outright winner to cover the game. <\/p>\n

One beneficiary of Grier\u2019s absence from this game is Syracuse quarterback Eric Dungey. Dungey is a dual threat quarterback that leads an Orange offense putting 40.8 PPG on the board. He\u2019s one of only three active quarterbacks with more than 8,000 yards passing in his college career and 1,000 yards rushing. In fact, he\u2019s only 29 yards short of the 2,000 mark and will almost certainly eclipse it during this bowl game.<\/p>\n

So what does West Virginia have in the way of backups to fill in for Grier? On paper, not much. Former Miami quarterback Jack Allison and freshman Trey Lowe are both expected to see action under center for the Mountaineers. The \u2018glass half full\u2019 scenario suggests that a strong performance by either could give them the inside track for next year\u2019s starting gig. The more realistic \u2018glass half empty\u2019 scenario\u2014Allison threw just 10 passes this season with six completions. Lowe has yet to take a snap in a college game. <\/p>\n

West Virginia coach Dana Holgorsen articulated the \u2018glass half full\u2019 scenario<\/a> when he spoke of Allison\u2019s in-practice progress during a post Christmas press conference: <\/p>\n

\u201cGuys change quickly when they get out of the backup mentality, the backup role. Guys change. I\u2019ve been excited and encouraged to see what he\u2019s been doing with the practice reps that he\u2019s gotten over the last couple of weeks. He\u2019s attacked it the right way, and I\u2019ve been satisfied with that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Working in Allison\u2019s favor are some seriously talented receivers. David Sills and Gary Jennings are big league talents but going from a franchise quarterback like Grier to an unproven option is just too much for West Virginia to pull off against a highly potent, well balanced Syracuse team.<\/p>\n

BET SYRACUSE -2 OVER WEST VIRGINIA<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The middle of three college football games for Friday is expected to be one of the highest scoring as ACC…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":4938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaaf"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4939,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions\/4939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}