Gildan New Mexico Bowl
Tags: Sports, Sports Betting

Gildan New Mexico Bowl

The fourth bowl of opening day is the New Mexico Bowl between Marshall and Colorado State (The previous bowl is previewed here).This should be a fun bowl to watch as its a fresh match-up -these two teams have never played and in fact Marshall has pretty much zero experience playing Mountain West teams — they played BYU in 1999 and BYU isn’t even in the Mountain West anymore.

The line for this game opened Colorado St -5.5 with a total of 58…. and it just sat there all week. This game had the least amount of line movement of any bowl game. And then this morning, bam, someone with some cash smacked Marshall and they are down to +3.5 across the board. Its true that 5.5 is a pretty dead number. And that’s true right down to 4.5. But, 4 means something. So, if Marshall was the play… the best number is gone.

Lets first see what this spread should be based on expected points scored and expected points allowed. The breakdown looks like this:

This chart explains that not only was Colorado St -5.5 probably a bad line, Colorado St -3.5 is still a bad line. It appears Marshall should be favoured by 3.5.

A second way to try and generate a theoretical spread is to look not at expected points scored and allowed but, at yards per play and yards per play allowed. That comparison is as follows:

Again, it looks like Marshall should be favoured or at least a pick’em. This was obviously created when the spread was 5.5 but, the same premise holds true. There is just 4 points of value in the spread now, not 6.

Some stats to look at that, while not really creating a spread, can help identify what a team’s chances of finishing drives are and what a teams chances of maintaining drives are, would be red zone efficiency and 3rd down efficiency. They look this:

It appears that Colorado St may have a slightly better chance to score once they reach the end zone and a slightly better chance to maintain drives and reach the red zone. However, Marshall has a much bigger advantage on the defensive side of the ball which should manifest itself in better success at stopping Colorado St from scoring once in the red zone and stopping Colorado St from continuing their drives.

This defensive advantage is made even more clear when the teams are compared using the following stats:

Marshall is going to sack the quarterback more (albeit not by much), they’re going to tackle Colorado St behind the line of scrimmage more, and they’re going to do a much better job holding Colorado St scoreless on drives (these last two stats, stop rate and points allowed per drive aren’t even that close). This points to Marshall winning the field position battle and probably wearing Colorado State down as the game progresses.

There is some concern when it comes to how explosive Colorado St’s offence can be.

They have one of the most explosive offence’s in college football. But, Marshall is fairly good at stopping explosive plays on defence. This should be the pivotal point of the match-up. Can Marshall’s stop rate hold up against this explosive offence?

One more thing to consider is strength of schedule. This should always be observed in bowl games. And while, relatively speaking, they both played terrible schedules, Colorado St did play a slightly tougher one -87 vs 102.

As far as the “spot” goes, Marshall should be a tad more motivated. They missed out an bowl last year and in the 13 bowls the university of Marshall has played none have been even close to this far west; in fact, they’ve only crossed the Mississippi once to play a bowl and it was in Fort Worth. So, the players should be pumped. Additionally, Marshall has no coaching turnover to worry about. There is stability there. Doc Holliday isn’t going anywhere. Furthermore, Doc Holliday has a fantastic record in bowls. He is 4–0 straight up, winning bowl games in 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Conversely, Colorado St actually plays in New Mexico almost every other year. In fact, they played here this year. And Colorado St has played in a bowl for four straight years, this is not necessarily going to be an “experience” for them.

Is Marshall more motivated and can they shut down/slow down the Rams offence? The bet here is yes. Take Marshall. Definitely should have gotten this preview out Thursday or Friday but, life…. If the line move, and “chasing steam” is bothersome, wait for a live line. Hope CSU scores first, then grab Marshall at +6 or higher. Or, be bold, ride Doc Holliday and take Marshall outright.

Marshall +3.5,

Good luck