Independence Bowl
Tags: Sports, Sports Betting

Independence Bowl

The first bowl on a busy Wednesday for bowl season is the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La. The combatants are Southern Mississippi and Florida St.

The line for this game opened FSU -14.5 and has ticked up to -15 and back down this morning to -14.5. The total has dropped from 50.5 to 49.

FSU has been a hard team to read this year as they lost their star qb and basically their season in the opening game of the year against Alabama. It sure seems like they never recovered, going 3–6, until reeling off 3 straight wins to end the year (including a hastily scheduled make-up game with ULM to qualify for the post-season). So, their stats, at last offensively, have to be taken with a grain of salt as they were never playing with what they envisioned.

The first comparison, as always to set the line, is the expected points scored and expected points allowed.

This shows that both teams struggle to score based on what their opponents usually give up, S.Miss 1 point less and FSU almost 3 points less. FSU however, does a great job of limiting their opponents, giving up 6.5 points less than they could be expected to. The bottom line though, is that this line, based on these numbers, should be a pick’em.

Yards per play also shows massive value on S.Mississippi. 17 points of value is the highest yet during the bowl season (this metric was great through the first 10 or 12 bowls but, as anyone who was reading yesterday knows, it was not helpful at all. All three favorites gave up massive value in yards per play and all covered pretty handidly).

Defensive and efficiency stats have been put together into one graphic here because none of them show any real difference between the teams except red zone defense. S.Miss has a decent 7% advantage at stopping teams in the red zone — the rest of the stats are almost identical.

There is huge disparity in strength of schedule, in fact, the biggest one that will be seen in bowl season, #11 vs #116. So, that makes it really hard to discern anything from these stats. As far as how motivated these teams will be to attend this bowl, you would have to imagine S.Mississippi is excited. True, its their third straight season being invited to a mid-tier bowl but, they won three straight games to end the season and while they went 0–2 against Power 5 schools this year they kept both games close (losing 24–17 to Kentucky and 24–10 to Tennessee on the road). Additionally, they beat Kentucky last year, in Kentucky. They should be pumped for the task of beating a Power 5 school in a bowl game. C-USA schools are 4–4 in bowl season but, this is only shot anyone has had a Power 5 school.

Florida St on the other hand underwent a rough season, as previously mentioned losing their star qb in the opener. They went 6–6 and had to run the table on the last three games to do so. Those last three games might be what some FSU backers today will point to as to why they are taking FSU. But, those wins included a DII school, a Florida Gators team that had obviously quit on the season and a make-up game against a 4–7 Sun Belt team that you can guess didn’t want to be there. Will their players be motivated to win this for their interim coach? Will they be motivated for new in-coming coach Willie Taggart? Will they care about playing in the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, something they could not have expected in August? All super hard questions to answer. A hot take might be, that they won’t care. Look at this injury report….

Look at all those injuries. And look at how many of them have just “left” the team. They include star defensive end Josh Sweat and star defensive back Derwin James. A full one third of the yards FSU created tackling for a loss is sitting this game out due to injury or draft preparation.

The hope here is S.Miss cares more and remembers they don’t have to win, they just can’t lose by more than two td’s. Not faking punts from inside their own 20 like the Huskies last night will be a big head-start. Also, freshman replacement qb James Blackman throws interceptions like candy canes a Christmas parade so, he should help keep S.Mississippi in it.

S.Miss +14.5,

Good luck