We have an early kickoff in Ames, Iowa on Saturday as the Cincinnati Bearcats face the Iowa State Cyclones. It will be a cold morning for college football too, and that tends to favor running teams like Iowa State. Both teams have some work to do near the bottom of the Big 12 standings as both sit at 2-4. The Bearcats have struggled away from home, losing all 3 conference road games (Houston, West Virginia, Arizona). Iowa State took a tough loss on the road to Baylor last week, but they have won 2 of 3 home games, including a win over Oklahoma State two weeks ago. I like the Cyclones a lot in this matchup, and I’ll take them to cover -3.
Iowa State has one of the best unheralded running backs in the nation in Aiden Flora. Flora already has over 1100 rushing yards on the season, and he has tallied over 180 yards on the ground 4 different times already. If you can’t stop him, you can’t stop anything Iowa State plans to do. How is Cincinnati against the run? 98th in the nation. That is bad news for the Bearcats. If the Bearcats find themselves trailing, the Iowa State defensive line can really get after it, and they can disrupt a game in a hurry. I like how this game lines up for the Cyclones as a matchup, and I like it even more so on a cold day in Ames, where the crowd is rowdy and the road team should struggle.
Cincinnati vs Iowa State Prediction: Iowa State -3 (-110) available at the time of publishing. Playable to -5.5.
