Week 2 College Football Upsets to Watch Out For
Posted by deaconcat08 on September 8, 2010
I didn’t hit many upset picks last week because there weren’t many upsets in games involving two Divison 1-A teams. To be honest with you, I’m not sure things will be much different on Saturday, but if they are, here are the upsets to watch out for. These are ordered from smallest underdog to largest, and the value in each parentheses represents the number of points by which each team is currently an underdog according to the World Sports Exchange.
Rice (+2.5) vs. North Texas- See analysis for this game in my picks of the week entry below.
Hawaii (+2.5) vs. Army- The Rainbow Warriors typically underperform on the mainland, but how can you not like Hawaii here after looking at both teams’ week 1 results. Hawaii’s offense was dominant against USC, and Army barely edged out lowly Eastern Michigan.
Georgia (+3.0) vs. South Carolina- It seems like the Gamecocks always play the Dawgs close, but they just can’t quite get over this early season hurdle as they are 1-7 against UGA since 2002. Both of these teams looked really good in Week 1, and even though all the chips are in place for the Cocks to take this one, you just can’t trust Spurrier’s Gamecocks to win a big SEC Saturday afternoon game like this one.
NC State (+3.5) vs. UCF- It’s not too often that you see an ACC team coming in as an underdog against a C-USA opponent, but that’s what we have here. There are a lot of question marks surrounding both of these teams, but State looked really good last week, and if their defense shows up on Saturday, they have a very good chance of winning.
Duke (+4.5) vs. Wake Forest- I went to a game Duke’s opener in Wallace Wade last weekend, and while I was underwhelmed by their defense, the Blue Devils offense is for real under new quarterback Sean Renfree. The Blue Devils have lost their last 10 to the Deacons, but Duke always plays them close and with Wake in the midst of a rebuilding season, this may be the year the Deacs’ win streak ends.
UCLA (+6.0) vs. Stanford- I’m still not convinced that this Cardinal team is anywhere near as good as they were with Gerhart in the backfield, and we’ll find out just how solid QB Andrew Luck is in this a tough early season conference road test.
Longshot of the Week: Troy (+13.5) vs. Oklahoma State- I liked the Trojans chances of winning this game a lot more in the preseason, as Troy struggled agaisnt Bowling Green in week 1 and OSU dominated Wazzou. However, Troy always gets up for their games against the big schools, and they’ll give another solid effort here against an inexperienced Cowboy squad.