College Football Betting - (23) Oregon Ducks at (9) USC Trojans (Saturday 8:00 PM ET)
Oregon is running into a buzzsaw. The Trojans were embarrassed on national television last Thursday as they lost outright to Oregon St. as 24-point favorites. Not only does USC want to regroup from that but it is also looking for some payback from last season.
The Trojans lost in Eugene last season which essentially knocked them out of the National Championship race. The loss this season was early enough for there to be hope for a championship this season but now the wins must be convincing.
Oregon has looked dominant in three of its wins but back-to-back games against Purdue and Boise St. were hardly that. The victories over Washington, Utah St. and Washington St. were by a combined 173-48 which is pretty impressive.
The part that is not so impressive is the fact that those teams are a combined 2-11 on the season so the wins don't really mean that much. The home loss to the Broncos showed how this team can be beat and USC will work that advantage.
This same situation happened to USC two years ago. The Trojans went into Corvallis and lost to the Beavers by two points only to rebound the following week in trouncing Stanford 42-0. Granted, Stanford is not the same team as Oregon but the point here is that the Trojans rebound from defeats better than anyone.
This team has not lost back-to-back games since early in 2001. Of the last 10 losses, not counting end of season bowl losses, the Trojans are 10-0 the next time out with those 10 wins coming by 15.2 ppg.
The Ducks are once again having problems at quarterback and it will finally catch up here after playing teams with no pulse on defense. For the second straight year Oregon has been forced to use a player tabbed fifth on the depth chart at quarterback after running out of healthy signal-callers once again.
In fact, over the past nine games, the Ducks have lost five different starting quarterbacks due to injury. The Trojans defense is still one of the best around, ranked 10th overall and 8th in scoring.
Since Pete Carroll came to USC, he has devised schemes to take out powerful offenses. USC is 9-1 ATS in home games when playing teams that average 425 or more ypg and that is all about the defense.
As far as the offense, 28 points in the magic number as the Trojans are 13-4 ATS over the last three seasons when they score at least 28 points. Those wins are by an average of 24.2 ppg which is more than enough to get it done here/ Look for an angry USC team to take its frustrations out on Oregon Saturday.
Pick: USC -16 (-110) available at Bookmaker.com.
- Matt Fargo of Sportscapping.com
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