This week New Mexico welcomes the Utah Utes to Albuquerque, New Mexico in Mountain West Conference action. The Utes opened as 21 ½ point road favorites, but early betting has moved the ncaa football odds to between 22 and 23 points. The public is playing Utah at around 90%.
While it’s wise to play really good teams against the point spread, I think it’s nearly equally wise to play against really bad teams. Washington State has been a favorite of mine, and I’m hoping New Mexico will be too. I missed them the first two weeks of the season because they flew under my radar. But not this week.
I’ll give the Lobos a little bit of a break. They’ve had a bad schedule. Traveling to Oregon for week 1 was a tough break. But there’s no excuse for giving up 59 first half points to any team. If Oregon didn’t play nice, the final score would’ve been worse than 72-0. Imagine that! In the end, the Ducks outgained the Lobos 720-107 total yards. New Mexico committed 5 turnovers. The next week a decent Texas Tech team came to town, and the Red Raiders won going away, 52-17. However, New Mexico put up 17 first half points and over 400 total yards for the game. To be fair, not a bad effort. But the Utes are a better team than Texas Tech. They’re balanced on offense and don’t make mistakes on defense. This has the makings of another blowout.
Utah is a very good football team. They beat Pittsburgh in overtime in week 1, and Pitt should win the Big East. The next week they took care of UNLV, 38-10. UNLV’s only touchdown came on a blocked punt. Utah plays lowly San Jose State the week after New Mexico, so they have no reason to look ahead. The only worry for the Utes is that starting quarterback Jordan Wynn is day-to-day with a sprained thumb. He missed the UNLV game but backup Terrance Cain had no problems leading the Utes to victory. Also, center Zane Taylor is doubtful with a knee injury.
Other than the simple fact that Utah is clearly better than New Mexico, I think the Utes are a good play for two reasons. First, Utah plays in a non-BCS conference. That means Utah needs to beat the heck out of bad teams just to impress voters in the hopes of making a BCS bowl. If they beat New Mexico by fewer than 28 points, I would consider that a loss for Utah. Second, bad teams tend to get markedly better as the season improves. If Utah played New Mexico in late October, this would be about 10-14 points closer. But playing a reeling Lobos team this early means New Mexico hasn’t had enough time to get their collective act together.
I don’t expect New Mexico to have as much offensive success against Utah as they did against Texas Tech. Tech is implementing a new 3-4 defensive scheme with a new head coach and coordinators. Over the past several seasons Utah has displayed a fundamentally sound defense that doesn’t beat itself. If the Lobos find the endzone more than once, I’ll be surprised. And even though Wynn might not be available, Utah’s offense shouldn’t need him. They’ve had success running the ball and Cain is 8-1 as a starter, so he has a lot of experience. I don’t expect another score like the Oregon game, but something near the Texas Tech score sounds about right. I see the Utes by between 28 and 35 points in an easy road victory. Don’t let this game fly under-the-radar – Utah backers should have a payday on Saturday.
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