UCF Knights vs. Houston Cougars Pick, Trends, and Preview

UCF is in the driver’s seat in the East Division of C-USA, and it has a game that it can afford to lose at some point and still survive. It won’t want to take any chances in this one though, with the Southern Miss Golden Eagles still sitting on the schedule. The Knights are off of an emotional 49-35 win over the East Carolina Pirates in arguably the biggest win in the history of their relatively new Bright House Networks Stadium. The argument could be made that this is the best team in the state of Florida right now, especially since UCF could very easily be 8-0 and not 6-2 if not for the fact that QB Jeff Godfrey has really taken a little bit time of time to get this offense going with limited mistakes. He hasn’t made any errors though of late, as the Knights have dropped at least 35 points on the board in each of the last four games, all of which have resulted in wins of at least two TDs. UCF also has a devastating defense that allowed a ton of points last week in tremendously uncharacteristic fashion. It is only conceding 279.9 yards and 16.5 points per game, both numbers of which are tops in C-USA.

Things looked to be totally lost when both starting QB Case Keenum and his backup QB Terrance Broadway went down with season ending injuries in a matter of just a couple of hours against the UCLA Bruins two months ago, but now that freshman QB David Piland has taken over, things have really turned around, and the Cougs are three tough wins away from making the conference championship. They have won back to back games over the SMU Mustangs and Memphis Tigers, and in the process, they have dropped 101 points on the board. Piland threw for five TDs and no picks against Memphis last week, improving his numbers to 1,108 yards, 11 TDs, and just three picks in his four games played since losing his redshirt at the outset of October. The pressure is coming off of RB Bryce Beall just a tad, though he still is really in control of this offense in the red zone. Beall has carried the ball a whopping 113 times this year and has 638 yards and 12 TDs to show for his work. The Cougs have allowed a whopping 30.5 points per game at home though, against a very iffy schedule.

These two teams are both streaking right now, but we are very weary of the fact that UCF has covered six straight NCAA football lines. Streaks like that don’t occur often, as the oddsmakers generally get a good grasp on a team after awhile. We tend to think that the Knights are incorrectly favored in this one. They could very well pull off a very huge win, but we tend to believe with the big win coming last week, that the Cougs are going to sneak up on them and take down this tussle.