Game Analysis

1-Star Best Bet – *WASHINGTON STATE (-14)  36   Arizona  15

Arizona has covered the spread in four consecutive games and the Wildcats’ performance level in those games has been a few points higher than their season standard. However, Washington State is 6-0-1 ATS in their last 7 games and the Cougars have been much better since turning to Jayden de Laura to quarterback the team. WSU is 5-5 and needs a win to assure a bowl game, so they won’t be looking past a bad Arizona team whose only win was against a depleted Cal team suffering from a Covid outbreak. That ugly 10-3 win against a Cal team missing over 20 players, including their star QB and most of their offensive line, is Arizona’s only victory of the season and I don’t think they’ll have a chance in this game.

The firing of WSU head coach Nick Rolovich has not been an issue, as the Cougars have played well in 3 games since that went down – losing by an average of just 8 points to good teams BYU and Oregon and winning by 13 points at Arizona State is a solid 3 game stretch. The WSU offense has been much better with de Laura behind center, as he’s been 0.7 yards per pass play better than average (7.3 yppp against teams that would allow 6.6 yppp to an average QB) while early season starter Jarrett Guarantano was 1.5 yppp worse than average and led the team to an average of just 18.5 points in his two starts. Arizona’s pass defense is even worse than it appears (I rate them at 1.6 yppp worse than average) when you account for them facing BYU without the Cougars best two receivers and facing Cal’s horrible backup quarterback, and I project de Laura to average 9.0 yards per pass play in this game.
Arizona will have a tough time keeping up with an offense that has averaged just 17.3 points per game against a schedule of teams that is just 0.1 yards per play better than average. Washington State’s defense is 0.6 yppl better than average, having yielded just 5.7 yppl to teams that would combine to average 6.3 yppl against an average defensive team. Arizona’s rushing attack isn’t too bad (0.2 yprp worse than average) but quarterback Will Plummer has averaged only 4.9 yards per pass play against teams that would allow 6.7 yppp to an average quarterback and Washington State’s pass defense is 1.1 yppp better than average (5.9 yppp allowed to quarterbacks that would average 7.0 yppp). Arizona is unlikely to reach their 17 points per game average and Washington State should score more than 30 points against a Wildcats’ defense that’s allowed 34 points or more in 6 of 8 games against FBS teams excluding the game against Cal’s offensive backups.

Washington State is a 1-Star Best Bet at -14 or less and a Strong Opinion up to -15 points.