Well, we said it before. Week Zero is hard to bet. A lot of interesting things happened on Saturday. We will go into what went wrong and what went right.
Taking Your Own Advice
I gave out three things that we need to always keep in mind while sports betting last week (you can find them here) that would hopefully help us win some bets. I chose a few games to look at with the most information possible and remembered to hold to my unit size and not chase more bets after a loss. All in all, it wasn’t a hot start but it could have been worse. Let’s get into the games and the bets.
Nebraska Vs Northwestern
This game was a classic “Scott Frost” game. Nebraska came out to a hot start with an eight-play 75-yard drive resulting in a touchdown. Nebraska fans had something to look forward to. They came out and did exactly what they said they were going to do.
Now to the defense. Northwestern got the ball and couldn’t move it at all. They had seven plays that resulted in 27 yards and a punt. Nebraska came out full tilt. After a punt by Nebraska and a field goal by Northwestern, the Huskers put together another great drive of 14 plays 80 yards, and a touchdown.
Nebraska had a firm grasp on this game, being up 14-3. This is where things start to go downhill. Nebraska let up a 41-yard touchdown. How do the Huskers respond? They fumble the ball. Nebraska somehow went up 28-17 on a great defensive play to force a fumble. Nebraska goes down the field and scores.
What does Scott Frost do with all the momentum in the world? He calls an onside kick which was not anywhere close to good. Momentum gone. From there, they proceeded to go back and forth with touchdowns until finally, the score was 28-24 Nebraska leading.
Nebraska had the ball and then Casey Thompson let one go and was picked off. Northwestern capitalized and scored a touchdown, going up 31-28. Nebraska had the ball at the end of the game but the spread was too far gone at that point for us to cash out our best bet. Nebraska ended up losing outright as a heavy favorite. The moral of the story, you can prepare and look at all the stats and situations in the world, but you can never prepare for really bad coaching.
Nebraska -13 was a miss.
UCONN Vs Utah St
This game we had perfectly scouted. UConn’s addition of Jim Mora Jr. paid off really well. UConn came out and looked like a completely different team. They came out and forced a high-scoring Utah St. team to an early punt. They followed up that great defensive stop with a nine-play 79 -touchdown drive. They had Utah St. on their heels. After a couple of turnovers UConn running back, Nathan Carter broke off a 44-yard run to get UConn into great scoring position. UConn was now up 14-0 being a 27-point underdog.
After that, the UConn offense went stagnant. With Utah St. putting up 24 unanswered points UConn found themselves down 24-14 they were still within the spread but needed to put up more points for our over to cash. The game was surprisingly a good one but wasn’t good enough for us to cash both bets. With the final score of 31-20, UConn covered the spread but the over didn’t hit. The logic was there, but the points were not. We go 1-1 in this game.
Final Recap
We leave Week Zero 1-2. Not horrible, but not good. We knew going into this, that it was going to be an uphill battle. Scouting out the games only to have some little things go wrong here and there and some questionable coaching calls messing up our winning bets is a tough stroke of luck. We look ahead to the official Week One of college football.
Check back on demo.borderfuelsports.com for the Week One picks and more on college football.
