The college football season just keeps chugging along, and now we’re staring Week 11 right in the face. Like most recent weeks, we have a 3-game card on Friday to warm us up for Saturday’s massive slate. However, unlike most weeks, this 3-game lineup has plenty of intrigue and postseason significance. Will UCF inch closer to eligibility in Scott Frost’s first season back in Orlando? Can USC take care of business against Northwestern while simultaneously continuing to fly under the radar as a College Football Playoff hopeful? Will Memphis continue its quest to represent the Group of 5 with a win over Tulane? We’re very close to finding out the answers to all of those questions.
After an easy winner on Louisiana Tech last week, I’m back with another Friday college football best bet, hoping to improve on my 7-4 record on these weekday picks. Here’s my favorite bet for the 3-game Week 11 Friday slate, but don’t forget to check out the rest of our NCAA predictions and CFB best bets on all of the biggest games of the weekend.
CFB best bet: UCF Knights +1.5 over Houston Cougars (-110)
Odd courtesy of BetMGM at the time of publishing. Playable to -1.
An interesting Big 12 tilt kicks off Friday’s action at 8:00pm ET on FS1 when the Houston Cougars head to Orlando to play the UCF Knights. Houston obviously boasts the better record, sitting at 7-2 on the season, but the Cougars find themselves in a tough situational spot on Friday. Not only do they come into this matchup off an embarrassing 45-35 loss to a West Virginia team that hadn’t won a game since September, but this will be the Cougars’ 7th straight game since their Week 4 bye, on top of it being a road game on short rest. Not to mention, they have a bye week next week ahead of 2 games against newly-found, in-state conference rivals in TCU and Baylor. Where will Houston’s head be on the road against a 4-win UCF team after pretty much blowing its chance to play for a Big 12 title at home against a then-2 win WVU team? Whether you’re a believer in coach Willie Fritz or not, it’s a question worth asking.
As the Knights showcased once again last week, they’re not very good on the road. UCF amassed just 3 points, 225 yards and 1 out of 11 third downs at Baylor in Week 10, and I think everyone would agree the Bears aren’t even good defensively. It was a head-scratching performance on both sides for UCF, but as the old adage goes – no team is as good or as bad as it looks in one game. I’m applying that logic to this game, especially after the Knights put forth such a massive offensive performance against West Virginia at home in Week 8 prior to their bye week.
On top of all that, UCF actually boasts a very strong defense. In fact, I’d argue UCF has the best defense on Houston’s schedule outside of Texas Tech. The Knights are top-25 in scoring, total defense, yards per play allowed, and third-down conversion rate allowed on the season as a whole – and they even sit 26th nationally in opposing red-zone attempts. Only 1 opponent has surpassed 13 points against them in the Bounce House, and that was Kansas – who was flying high offensively at the time.
This line opened with UCF as a slight favorite and has since crossed over 0 with Houston now favored. I thought the original line was correct. Given the situational advantage for the home team with the better defense, I’ll take the extra couple points of value with the Knights and hope UCF’s offense resembles more of what it looked like against West Virginia rather than Baylor.
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