On December 19th 2009 the St. Petersburg Bowl will take place. This year it matches up The Central Florida Knights vs the Rutgers Scarlet Knights. This will be the first meeting between these two schools in their history.
Central Florida Knights: 8-4 SU 9-2 ATS 4-6-1 O/U
Central Florida comes into only it's 3rd bowl game in school history losing the previous two with the most recent being a 10-3 loss to Mississippi State in the 2007 Liberty Bowl. The Knights have had a pretty admirable season thus far with losses to the teams they were supposed to lose to (Miami, Texas, E. Carolina, & Southern Miss) and wins over the teams they were supposed to beat (Samford, Buffalo, Memphis, Rice, Marshall, Tulane, & UAB). Their signature win on the season came on November 14th when the then 12th ranked Houston Cougars came to town. UCF came back from a 17-3 deficit to beat the Cougars 37-32. RB Brynn Harvey had a monster game on the ground with 35 carries for 139 yards and 3 TD's while QB Brett Hodges contributed 241 yards and a TD to put the Knights season on a roll to end the season.
RB Brynn Harvey had a big year overall as well rushing for 1077 yards and 14 TD's on 248 carries. QB Brett Hodges also had a respectable year throwing for 2263 yards with 15 TD's (though he did have 11 INT's). The Knights averaged 26.3 PPG and 348 YPG offensively on the season while giving up 20.7 PPG and 350.2 YPG. Most of the yards they gave up defensively were through the air though as they DOMINATED their opponents on the ground giving up only 84.6 YPG.
Rutgers Scarlet Knights: 8-4 SU 6-6 ATS 4-8 O/U
The Scarlet Knights started the year with a 47-15 home loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats 47-15 in a game in which QB Domenic Natale threw 3 INT's and the team at one point trailed Cincy 45-7. After that loss however the team won 7 of their next 8 games with win over Connecticut and South Florida while holding teams to only 11.6 PPG (shutting out South Florida and Texas Southern) over that stretch. It was clearly a time when this team was clicking on all cylinders with the only loss coming to Pittsburgh.
Rutgers was led on the ground this year by RB Joe Martinek who had 923 yards and 9 TD's on the year, while QB Tom Savage led the Scarlet Knight's attack through the air with 1917 Yards Passing with 12 TD's to just 6 INT's. As you can tell by the #'s Rutgers won most of it's games this year with it's defense giving up only 312 YPG with just 108.9 of that coming on the ground.
A few points to consider in this matchup
1) Rutgers lead the nation in turnover margin with +20 while UCF wasn't too far behind being on the plus side themselves @ +8.
2) These two teams combined only gave up and average of 38.1 ppg on the season and both played their shard of high powered offenses (Texas, Houston, Miami, West Virginia, Pitt) that should have driven those #'s up, but they were both so good against the rush that their defenses kept them in most games all year and shut some people down all togehter.
3) The Under is 8-3 in the Scarlet Knights last 11 games overall & Central Florida has played 4-6-1 to the under on the year.
I guess by now everyone can tell where I'm heading with this. It will be a matchup of two teams that are stingy with their own turnovers, both play wonderful defense on the ground (though not so much through the air), and shouldn't have to worry about the other doing much damage through the air.
Prediction: Rutgers 17 - UCF 13 or UCF 24 - Rutgers 17 (that's if Harvey can do some damage on the ground).
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