2023 Arizona Bowl Odds: Toledo vs Wyoming Analysis & Betting Picks

 

Who Will Reign Supreme? 2024 College Football National Championship Odds Revealed!

 

2024 College Football Week 1 Schedule

Next Games in the NCAAF Calendar
Week 1 of the 2024 College Football season kicks off on Saturday, August 24th, with exciting matchups across the country!

 

Previous Betting News

Arizona Bowl Preview & Prediction

The college bowl season is upon us, and there are a plethora of bowls for your viewing entertainment. On Friday, December 30th, the Ohio Bobcats will square off against the Wyoming Cowboys in the Barstool Sports Arizona Bowl. This game will be played at Arizona Stadium in Tucson, Arizona.

The Bobcats finished the season with a 9-4 record. They will be representing the MAC. The Cowboys come in at 7-5, and are coming from the Mountain West Conference. Let’s take a brief look at each of the participants, and then we will give you our prediction for the Arizona Bowl.

 

Ohio Bobcats

Ohio finished their MAC season with a 7-1 record, losing their season finale to Toledo by a score of 17-7. The Bobcats have a very good offense, as they average nearly 30 points per game. With a strong running game, Ohio averages nearly six yards per play, which ranks them 39th in the country. They’ll be facing a very vulnerable Wyoming defense that struggles to stop the ground game. We’ll see if starting quarterback CJ Harris, who replaced starter Curtis Rourke after Rourke tore his ACL in November, has what it takes to lead Ohio to victory.

Defensively, Ohio has a strong run defense. However, the secondary has some issues. Ohio is ranked 165th in the country in pass defense, so look for the Cowboys to try and attack the weakness of the Bobcat defense.

 

Wyoming Cowboys

After going 5-3 in the Mountain West, the Cowboys are happy to be in the Arizona Bowl. Offensively, the Cowboys have struggled. They’re averaging just over 19 points per game, and haven’t put more than 17 points on the scoreboard since October. The strength of the Wyoming offense is their rushing attack, so we’ll see if they choose to go that route, or if they try to attack Ohio’s lackluster secondary. They only average just over 125 passing yards per game, so we’ll be surprised if they stray away from their rushing attack.

Wyoming has a good defense, so we’ll see if they can slow down the Ohio running game, or if Ohio will try and air things out. This should be a good battle.

 

Prediction

These two programs have only met twice before. In a home-and-home series in 2007 and 2008, the Cowboys were victorious in both matchups. Both teams are looking for their fourth consecutive bowl victory as well.

In looking at the spread for this game, the Ohio Bobcats are favored by one point. Ohio is 9-4 against the spread this season, while Wyoming is 6-6 against the spread. The Bobcats are 5-0 straight up in their last five games as a favorite, so that is a good sign to take the Ohio Bobcats.

We’re going to follow that sign and go with Ohio in this one. The Ohio offense will overpower the Wyoming defense and will be able to put up enough points to cover the spread. We just can’t see Wyoming’s lackluster offense putting up many points on the Bobcat defense. Ohio wins the Arizona Bowl 24-14.

 

 

Previous Betting News

Arizona Bowl: Wyoming is Underdog, can they win the Bowl?

We all love football, but fans tend to fall into different camps. There are some who love nothing more than to see a shootout with tons of scoring, while others are all about hard-nosed, defensive football. With bowl games, it can be tough to know what you are going to get, usually because we tend to see matchups that don’t come around very often. There are some game you can look at, though, that are a little easier to call in terms of scoring. You look at the Arizona Bowl, which goes off on Friday, we have a pair of teams who tend to lean more toward the defensive side of things. The odds for this one has been moving quite a bit, with Wyoming moving from favorite to underdog. This should be a close one, but can Wyoming come away with the win as a slight underdog? Let’s take a closer look at the NCAA Football Bowl prediction.

 

The Pros for the Wyoming Cowboys

When you consider that Boise State were the kings of their division in the Mountain West, going a perfect 8-0, you have to say that Wyoming finishing 2nd behind them was a pretty decent achievement. The Cowboys ended the season with a 7-5 record, which included going 5-3 in conference play. One of their losses came against Boise State in the latter part of the season, but it was a competitive outing that Wyoming lost by a FG, so they can hang with teams at this level.

From a betting standpoint, there is a lot to like about Wyoming ahead of this one. They have covered the spread in 7 of their last 8 games played on a Friday, while also covering in 6 of their last 7 games played in the month of December. Wyoming was pretty decent on the defensive side of the football this season, giving up just 23 PPG.

 

The Cons for the Wyoming Cowboys

We could talk in glowing terms about the Wyoming defense, but we cannot ignore that the offense was not that great at all, managing just 20 PPG this season. Furthermore, they only hit the 20-point mark once this season when playing FBS teams. The offense is taking a bit of a hit in this game, as they will be missing a pair of the wide receivers, with one in the transfer portal and the other one out injured.

It’s a similar story when you start to dig a little deeper into the betting trends with the Wyoming Cowboys. They are just 1-4 SU in their last 5 games that they started as an underdog. They are also 3-6 SU in Friday games when playing away from home, all of which makes betting on them to win a little more problematic.

 

Will the Wyoming Cowboys Win?

I think the one thing that we can expect here is a low scoring game, especially since Ohio will not have their starting QB playing on Friday. The bigger question is about who will win, and there are enough things here that have me leaning toward the Ohio Bobcats getting the win. If I was going to play this one at all, it would almost certainly be the UNDER.