Originally Posted by
Ralphie Halves
The more I look at it, I disagree. I like the Over.
First off, I look at totals differently. If I would play the over, and I would, I'm not necessarily looking for 10 wins or more. I'm looking for 9 wins or more. It's the same line of thinking when I took USC over 10 wins. They could lose two, but no more than that. If I push, so what? You push all the time when betting win totals, so your advantage comes in those spots where a push is likely your worst scenario.
And a lot of you know what I mostly look for in games, and it's coaching. Stay with me here. First off, the talent at LSU is always nothing short of awesome, every year, so that's a given. Orgeron is not going to be calling plays, so stop thinking he's going to have a major bearing on what happens in-game, he's not. He has what could arguably be the top coordinators in the country in Matt Canada and Dave Aranda.
Aranda needs no introduction, he's a killer, and the key reason LSU's D has been so consistently good. Canada comes in to take the governor off of an offense that has been stifled under Les Miles, who did have a major say in the way it was run, and was running offenses from the 1980s and 90s. Canada's offenses always over-achieve, and it's scary to think what that talent could do if they did anything more than under-achieve, like they've been doing for years.
Casual dum-dum fans often scratch their head when their team has a down year, and never stop to think that the guy who ran their entire offense or defense last year got swooped up by another team and is no longer there. Yes, the guy holding the PlayStation controller actually has a pretty big impact on the team's performance, surprise surprise.
I'm not playing it, since I already have like 15 of these freakin win total bets out there right now, but if I was, I would be confident playing OVR 9.