Myrtle Beach Bowl Betting Preview
Tags: Sportsbetting, Collegefootball

Nothing better than two 6–6 teams going toe-to-toe on a Monday at 2:30pm!

Myrtle Beach Bowl

Tulsa (6–6) vs Old Dominion (6–6)

Monday, 2:30pm, ESPN

Tulsa -9/Total 52.5

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After a pretty entertaining first weekend, Bowl season rolls on Monday with a game that doesn’t seem very interesting on paper, but features two teams who had to fight to just reach bowl eligibility, so hopefully some of that will carry over to Myrtle Beach. Tulsa’s season by any tangible measure was disappointing. They made the AAC title game last year and had 18 starters back, but limped to .500. They had to win their final three games of the year to get bowl eligible and ended with a nice win over SMU. Old Dominion didn’t play football in 2020 and started 2021 1–6 and had to win five-straight elimination games to get here. It’s a heck of an achievement for second year coach Ricky Rahne and the Monarch program playing in its second bowl game since moving to FBS in 2014.

There are some positives for the Tulsa offense. They run the ball ok. Shamari Brooks is 78 yards away from 1,000 on the season. He’s backed up by Anthony Watkins and Deneric Prince who combined for almost 1,000 yards as a duo. Receiver Josh Johnson had a breakout season with 75 catches and 985 yards. The problem for Tulsa on offense is they turn the ball over…a lot. Only four teams in FBS turned the ball over more than the Golden Hurricane. Quarterback Davis Brin was largely responsible for that, throwing 16 interceptions. Brin also completes under 60 percent of his passes so they’re hoping he’ll be more efficient here. Brin is capable of putting up some numbers, he threw for 428 yards against Ohio State this year, but he has to work on his ball security. There’s nothing spectacular about the Tulsa defense, they’re just a solid unit. They’re 48th in pass efficiency defense and 61st in rushing defense.

The Old Dominion turnaround coincided with the insertion of quarterback Hayden Wolff and running back Blake Watson into the starting lineup. Wolff took over against Western Kentucky and improved upon the work previous starter DJ Mack had done to that point. Mack completes 51.5 percent of his passes and had a 5 to 7 TD to INT ratio. Wolff’s completion percentage is over 60 percent and his TD to INT ratio is 10 to 6. He’s not lighting the world on fire, but two of his picks were against WKU and two were in the season finale against Charlotte where ODU scored 56 points. Watson took the starting running back job against Marshall and ran for 168 yards. He’s only rushed for fewer than 100 yards in a game once since then. Old Dominion has been fine defensively, ranking 44th in EPA per pass play and EPA per rush play allowed.

There’s a pretty big gulf in quality between the American and Conference USA so these 6–6 records aren’t exactly equal, but this smells of the kind of game where the underdog hangs around. Counting the Celebration Bowl, underdogs are 6–2 against the spread in bowl games so far with four outright wins (the line in the WKU-App State game closed all over the place, but that was another upset win in some places). Old Dominion is going to be very excited to be in their second bowl game, particularly after starting 1–6. Tulsa is better, but I doubt they’re pumped to be in this game. I think Tulsa wins, but I’d take the points in this one if I was betting it.