Game Analysis

Lean – HAWAII (+2)  32   Brigham Young  29

Lean – Under (65.5)

Tuesday, December 24 – 5 pm Pacific

BYU has a campus on the Island and should have plenty of support for this game, so I treated it as a home/neutral game for Hawaii rather than a full home game in the math model. Even with that being the case the math favors Hawaii as a small dog because BYU’s offense is overrated. The Cougars appear to have a good offense, as they averaged 6.4 yards per play against teams that would allow 5.9 yppl to an average attack. However, starting quarterback Zach Wilson was not nearly as good as the team’s pass rating of 0.7 yards per pass play better than average, as Wilson averaged 6.65 yppp against teams that would allow 6.59 yppp to an average quarterback while the backup quarterbacks, Jaren Hall and Baylor Romney, combined for 8.0 yppp on 140 pass plays. BYU’s rushing attack also isn’t as good as their season numbers (5.4 yards per rushing play against teams that would allow 5.3 yprp to an average team). Ty’Son Williams, who began the season as the starter, was injured in the 4^th game after averaging a healthy 5.4 ypr against good competition (Utah, Tennessee, USC and Washington). Sione Finau emerged as an even better runner, averaging 6.1 ypr and leading the team in rushing in basically just 5 games of action, but Finau was injured in week 12 and is out also. BYU is also missing out on the running of backup QB Jaren Hall, who averaged 8.2 yards on his 21 runs. The main backs in this game are likely to be #2 rusher Lopini Katoa, who averaged just 4.1 ypr, and Emmanuel Esukpa, who averaged only 4.2 ypr. Freshman Jackson McChesney could see some action too and he ran for 274 yards on 25 runs – although 228 of those yards on 15 runs came against the worst defense in the nation (UMass). BYU’s offense, both running and passing, is not as good as their season numbers suggest, although my math still projects 409 yards at 6.4 yards per play for the Cougars in this game against a porous Hawaii defense that has yielded 6.4 yppl to a schedule of teams that would average only 5.5 yppl against an average defensive team.

Hawaii makes up for the bad defense with a run-and-shoot attack that averaged 468 yards per game at 6.8 yppl (against teams that would allow 6.0 yppl to an average team). Cole McDonald is the quarterback and he settled into a good rhythm after throwing 8 interceptions in the first 3 games (just 6 picks on 337 passes the last 11 games). BYU only allowed 24.4 points per game this season but the Cougars are only 0.2 yards per rushing play better than average defending the run and they’re 0.1 yppp worse than average against the pass (6.3 yppp allowed to quarterbacks that would average 6.2 yppp against an average stop unit). Hawaii is projected rack up 454 yards at 6.5 yppl in this game.

Overall, Hawaii is projected to have an edge of 45 total yards, although BYU has a projected 0.5 advantage in turnovers. With special teams added in (0.6 points edge for Hawaii) it all adds up to Hawaii by 2.5 points with a total of 60.7 points. I’ll lean with Hawaii as an underdog in this game and to the Under at 65 points or higher.