Utah State is bad, truly terribly bad, and that will show in this game vs. Fresno State. Back the Bulldogs on the road in Logan as big favorites against the Aggies.
If we wanted to completely insult your intelligence it would be easy to do that in this one – we could make a case that based on their game flows no team in the country turns it on in the fourth quarter more than the Utah State Aggies! Which is an absurdity, of course.
But with a line move dropping this one right into the heart of our play range, we can go to one of our very favorite axioms in all of sports – Most truly terrible teams are even worse than they appear to be. So let’s get to work.
Why are awful teams worse than they appear to be? Because they rarely take the best punch from their opponents, and often see the other side merely going through the motions as they save energy for more important games. Because of that the scoreboards and box scores do not get a chance to fully reflect their ineptitude. Utah State is an absolute textbook example of that. Here are the scores by quarters for the Aggies so far this season:
- 1st Quarter – 7-75
- 2nd Quarter – 35-82
- 3rd Quarter – 9-85
- 4th Quarter – 66-38
So if you go back to our statement in italics in the first paragraph, you can see how the statistical case can be made. This is a team that has scored 56.4 percent of all of their points in the fourth quarter, and also has held the opposition to less than half as many points in the final period as in any other. But those numbers do not reflect a positive in any way. Rather, they are an indication of just how awful this team is, and that so much of what has happened in the final period has been a case of the opposition completely letting up, on both sides of the ball. Here is what does matter. At the end of three quarters they have been trailing by a combined 242-51. And in the first and third quarters, when both teams come out fresh, it has been a combined 160-16. That is ugly.
Now things go from bad to worse for Brent Guy and his team. Instead of an opponent looking to coast, they are going up against a fresh and rested Fresno State team coming off of a bye, and it was a break that the Bulldogs needed in the worst way, getting injured talents like WR Marlon Moore, TD Bear Pascoe, DT Jon Monga healthy again. With no distraction the Bulldogs will treat this one seriously as they focus on improving their bowl picture, which means that they mentally will not wear down late, and physically they can keep piling up the points – three of the top seven rushers in the WAC operate out of this offensive backfield, a rather remarkable count. They are off of back-to-back games in which they have topped 300 yards rushing, and with only Wisconsin holding them under 5.0 yards per attempt in a game this season, they can completely wear out a defense that does not like getting hit head on.
There is also little home field advantage in Logan, where the crowds wane as each disappointing season wears on. In the Brent Guy era they have been a home underdog over the past five games of the season six times, going just 1-5 ATS. That negative count grows by one more in this one.
Free Pick: Fresno St -14½ (-110)