Bowling Green @ Ball State 11/24/2015

I recommended a 1% play on BGSU -20.5 when the line opened. I guess the question in this game is which if either of the teams will show up with some energy in a game with no ramifications. BGSU has their side of the conference won, while Ball State hasn't played at all well in quite a while except for a luck-aided win against Massachusetts a month ago. Defensively Ball St. is a disaster. I would think that BGSU, who struggled throwing the ball in their last couple of games, throwing for their lowest ypp average of the season in back to back games, will want to get some positive momentum back there before preparing for the MAC championship game on December 4th. In the second half, though, I expect BGSU to a fair amount of running the ball with a healthy lead. That's my one concern for the Over and why I didn't recommend a play on it, even though the line has shot up enough that just playing for a pure middle would have been worth it. I'm not sure Ball St. can score enough points to make BGSU keep the pedal to the metal in the 4th quarter. BGSU's run defense has been pretty good in conference play, with the only bad game there against Ohio in a game where BGSU had a huge 2nd half lead but Ohio kept running the ball anyway -- and Ohio's running game has been really, really good the past few weeks, starting with that game. Ball State's running game had a good start to the season but weirdly has done much worse in conference play than it did against TA&M and NW. They had a good ypc average last week against Ohio -- but Ohio's defense hasn't been able to bounce back in the final month like its offense has. The Ball passing game has been up and down, but have all three of their worst passing games in the second half of the season. BGSU's pass defense started off the season pretty poorly, but has been decent against conference foes. Ball State just doesn't have any offensive advantages they can consistently exploit in this game. They have been playing at a faster pace as they've leaned more on the pass lately. If they decide to play at their faster pace most of this game than this game could easily go Over the total, or at least the opening total. Ball State has been involved in some high-scoring shoot outs this year, so it makes sense to think that a game against BGSU could obviously go that direction.