Miami -13.5 vs UAB. Total 55
College Football is back! Been some question marks coming into the season on whether or not we’d actually get to this point, but here we are. Limited action overall, but at least we have it. Onto the game here…
The Miami Hurricanes are hosting the UAB Blazers in their season debut and this team has taken a 180 on the offensive side of the ball in regards to personnel and it’s much needed. They bring in new OC Rhett Lashlee from SMU who will bring a new spread offense to the Hurricanes. They also picked up D’Eriq King in the off-season to lead this spread offense. Something he was all too familiar with from his Houston Cougar days. This team though hugely under-performed last season offensively, and had limited practices to learn this new offense. It would not surprise if this Miami team goes through some growing pains early especially in this game. This new offense will be a huge uptick in tempo though. Miami was a relatively slow team last year, and this will change dramatically.
Miami draws a good defense here in UAB, but it cannot go without saying that UAB is a good defense in a non Power 5 Conference. With Miami though, you know you have a good defense. It was the lone bright spot last season with this squad and this is certainly expected to be a great defense again this year. UAB is by no means a great offense and should really struggle to find consistency on the offensive end here. Coming from their game with Central Arkansas, this game should have a quicksand feel to it for their offense.
UAB’s game plan here will have to be to slow this game down with an effective run game lead by Spencer Brown and Jermaine Brown Jr. My big issue with all of this is how stout Miami is upfront and against the run. UAB is also not a team built to have success on 3rd and long. This was one of the worst teams in D1 at converting 3rd downs last year and they figure to be in quite a few long ones here vs Miami.
This total opens at 48 and Miami -16, but has since seen a consensus move to 55 and Miami -13.5. Much of this movement has occurred after UAB’s recent game. Could it be a recency bias, could it be Miami’s woes from last year, or maybe even the new offense with limited time to practice? Regardless, the handle hasn’t liked and won’t like Miami in this spot. It will not surprise if this total continues to bump up with Miami’s expected tempo speeding this game up and people thinking the number is just too big with UAB. This will open up a play on UAB’s team total for me and will be my favorite play in this game. I’ll update this article on Thursday with the best possible number, but just know I’m good with 20.5 or higher to play it under. I’m hopeful, we even see a 21.5 number which would be very favorable if the market moves it there. As for a side in this game, I like Miami minus the points, but again I feel we can do better on the number, so I’ll call it a lean for now.
Bets for the Game
UAB TT UNDER (Target 20.5, waiting to see if 21.5 is available)
(LEAN) Miami minus the points at -13.5. If this drops severely to 10.5 or less, I’ll add this for 0.5u.
