Game Analysis

Lean – Under (65) – TULANE (-3.5)  32   Southern Methodist  27

SMU’s 77-63 shootout against Houston two weeks ago appears to have influenced the market towards the over in their games. The Mustangs went under a huge total by 8.5 points last week and there is still value playing the under this week.

SMU has a good offense that has averaged 40.3 points on nearly 500 total yards per game but Tulane has allowed just 21.1 points per game and their defensive rating (0.7 yppl better than average) is 1.1 yards per play better than what the average defensive rating of the teams that the Mustangs have faced and is the same as SMU’s offensive rating of +0.7 yppl.

Tulane’s offense is 0.2 yppl worse than average and SMU’s defense is only 0.3 yppl worse than average, so I don’t expect the Green Wave to explode offensively in this game either. Tulane should score more than their 30.6 points per game average because of the extra possession or two that they’ll get facing a high paced SMU team, but that’s not enough to justify their 34 points projected team total.

That 140 point game that SMU played against Houston has inflated the total on this game and a points based model would only project 63.5 total points (adjusted for the good weather) even with that outlier included.

I’ll lean under 64 points or more.