International Bowl Mark's Free Pick College Football South Florida Bulls-NIU Huskies: 1/2/10

Written by Mark | 01 January 2010

International Bowl-College Football 1/2/10

Northern Illinois Huskies (7-5) (MAC)-South Florida Bulls (7-5) (Big East)

By Mark • Saturday January 2nd, 2009 12 PM EST
Line-South Florida -7

Northern Illinois is one of those MAC teams that is better than advertised. Their 28-20 loss at Wisconsin followed by 28-21 win over Purdue is typical Huskies in that it shows they are no pushover. NIU is led by their ground game on offense that produced over 200 yards and the 17^th ranking. Passing is something they do sparingly but they are more effective than the numbers suggest, simply because they don’t throw often. However, it’s defense that carries this team. Northern Illinois was difficult to run on although they had some problems defending the pass. NIU allowed just 21 points which was good enough to keep the team in every game although they were a bit overmatched in their final two games when Ohio and CMU hit them with 38 and 45 respectively which ultimately cost them a shot at the conference crown.

It seemed that the loss of Matt Grothe for the year would be the beginning of the end for South Florida. It proved to be the beginning for the talented BJ Daniels, as he burst onto the scene leading the team to an upset of Florida State. Daniels has tremendous upside but as the Bulls closed the year on a 2-5 run I don’t know if that would have happened if Grothe was at the helm. With the loss of Grothe, the defense became the focus of the team and is indeed their strong point. They were ranked 30^th and hard to pass on, but weaker when defending the pass. The USF defense allowed just 21 points per game but gave up some crooked numbers on occasion. Perhaps the weight of carrying the team and trying to compensate for an offense that was up and down was too much to ask.

South Florida is 5-13 against the spread in their past 18 versus a team with a winning record and 2-5 against the number in their last 7 overall. NIU is 4-1 against the spread in their past 5 games as an underdog of 3.5-10 points and 2-5 in the last 7 games overall.

On paper this seems like a mismatch as South Florida appears to have the speed and quickness typical of Florida schools. Northern Illinois has proven they can stand up and deliver a knockout blow from time to time. I don’t know if this is one of those times…