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Wazzu +19 vs Cal,
A disclaimer: I do not blindly homer pick my team, and doubly so do I not try to convince others to do so out of shear homer-ism. As you should with every pick you make, use your own damn discretion.
That said...
Some background on why WSU at +19, is so solid. I do not ever call picks "locks", only a fool gives a guarantee, and a bigger fool accepts it, when an outcome is undetermined.
This is however a really, really, really good pick with a TON of value based on the data.
Wazzu is a program right now that has a really odd inverse home/road advantage under Mike Leach, but it is very real. Their home record SU and ATS, under Leach has been horrendous, yet they are 7-2 ATS on the road as underdogs in conference games under Leach since 2013. Maybe it's selective or recency bias, but I disregard 2012's SU/ATS results as Mike Leach was in his 1st year and took over THE VERY WORST Big 5 program in the country.
There has been a near decade long problem with the performance of our teams at home. The crowds have been very sparse, the teams almost always seem to play down with exception of rivalry games(Idaho, UW, Oregon, OSU). Maybe part of it has to do with them staying 30 miles away in a hotel the night before home games. The coaches doing this to avoid campus distractions(parties...WSU is a proud party school).
Inversely, in the thick part of the season, they really tend to play up to the really good teams, and even take out teams that appear better than they are. Especially on the road. They always appear to be focused and prepared even when playing much better teams like Stanford and Oregon, when they're clearly outmanned and have no chance at winning. The effort is palpable.
In 2013 WSU went on the road to USC, Cal and Arizona and came out with straight up wins as road dogs. We backdoor covered late vs Oregon on the road, and lost SU and ATS in the Apple Cup vs UW(barely).
In 2014 they beat Utah and Oregon State SU on the road as dogs, lost but covered vs Stanford, and lost at #13 ASU(did not cover) a week after upsetting OSU on the road, and already after hitting that magical bowl-dashing 7th loss.
In 2015, they've lost at home vs Portland State, and did not cover in their win vs Wyoming at home. They did however go on the road and "upset" Rutgers(favored by 3). The loss to Portland State is heavily skewing the predictor models right now, IMO.
Now for this Cal vs WSU game. The line opened at 14/14.5 points, and it's quickly jumped to 19 or 19.5 at every book. Cal is ranked for the first time since forever at 4-0 and is (IMO) getting a little bit more credit than they deserve. They lucked out on a missed PAT vs Texas, and UW was just offensively inept with 5 turnovers. Texas moved the ball AT WILL on Cal's defense. UW still put up 24 points despite their TO issues. That tells me bad defense.
I get the sense the odds makers accounted for some of the things I've talked about above, when setting the line at 14/14.5. This is despite all the predictor and ELO models showing Cal as an 18-20pt favorite at home. Early bettors see the WSU loss to Portland State, and Cal's wins over respected Texas and UW, and have piled on early.
Another small factor here as well. Mike Leach is notorious for not pulling up and surrendering late in games that have been decided. I'm talking those games in the 24-31 point margin range inside the last 7 minutes. Typically teams trailing know it's over and will run vanilla to run clock and get out. Leach NEVER does. This has led to a few backdoor covers in the losses on the road(Oregon in 2013 and Stanford 2014 namely). That also has value, though in this game I just don't see it factoring in.
This will be another close game like last year, a good old fashioned defense-free shootout.
We're getting 19 points right now and +675 on the ML. That is a lot of value.
jtoler gave Cougsky17 2 Betpoint(s) for this post.
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Originally Posted by GoCougs!
