I am a little late on this play and I apologize. Got hit by 2 feet of snow today in the northeast and it really threw my schedule off. Either way I love this play for Middle Tennesee and I'll take the points.
Southern Miss has a great offense 28th in the country, but they have faced an average 84th ranked defense. I'm not sold on this offense to really take them over the hill because their defense is pretty bad. In their 4 games against "good defenses" they were 2-2 and only 1 game would have covered the spread we get here and that was against UCF in game 1 of the season when they won by 7. Middle Tenn has a solid defense ranked 48th and as it stands right now ranking wise it will be the best defense they have faced all year long, but you can't rank those stats like that because of strength of competition. One thing we do know is MTSU's defense is better than SMISS because they both played the same strength of schedule in terms of offenses they faced (65th average) and MTSU comes out on top and balanced. They also have the defensive front to disrupt SMISS offense.
MTSU led the nation this year in tackles for loss and was 4th in sacks. Granted it was against some poor offenses in the Sun Belt, but I do not like Southern Miss' chances here tonight to out score Dwight Dasher the QB of MTSU should have been the conference player of the year he had 21 passing TD's and 10 on the ground. He will take over this game when he has to and SMISS might fall even as favorites.
These two teams have one common opponent in Memphis. Both won the game while MTSU won 31-14 and SMISS won 36-16, both games at home. MTSU outgained Memphis by 217 yards while SMISS was out gained by 69 yards. That's good for nearly a 300 yard difference. That tells me that MTSU has a better defense and offense and even though it's a one game sample their is plenty other criteria that I have put into my thoughts on this game. SMISS really has not played well on the road this year going 1-5 while MTSU was 4-2 on the road. MTSU is 8-3 ats in their last 11 non-conference games and 8-2 ats in their last 10 after allowing less than 20 points to an opponent in their previous game. Many may think the passing on both sides will light up the sky but I think this will be a lower scoring game than many think.
