The Wisconsin Badgers suffered an incredibly frustrating loss against the UCLA Bruins on the road this weekend. You can be mad at the officials for a bunch of bad or missed calls; you can shout at the offense for only scoring seven points; at Colton Joseph for only managing 66 passing yards; or even at the defense for being miserable on third downs.
But wallow for a bit, reset, pick yourself up, and let's look at the upcoming game on Saturday. The Badgers get another primetime game on NBC against another Los Angeles school. Wisconsin takes on the USC Trojans, and the odds have dropped; and they may look eerily familiar.
Wisconsin vs. USC odds, spread and total
Odds provided by FanDuel Sportsbook
Moneyline
- Wisconsin +112
- USC -134
Spread
- Wisconsin +2.5 (-108)
- USC -2.5 (+112)
Total
- 48.5 (over -114/under -106)
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
Wisconsin goes into another game in which they are less than three-point underdogs. This is how the line ended last week against UCLA. It may have started around 4.5 or 3.5, depending on which book you looked at, but it ended at 2.5. So, Wisconsin is staring down a very similar outlook to UCLA in terms of Vegas predictions.
There is a major difference between the two odds... the over/under looks a lot different. Wisconsin vs. UCLA was at low odds around 43.5, but now it's getting higher. Not drastically higher, but it jumped up to 48.5 as a total score. That may surprise you, considering Wisconsin only scored 7 points last week against the Bruins.
But UCLA has a stout defense; the Trojans have holes in theirs. They've only lost one game this season, but it wasn't because of the defense. The Trojan defense has allowed 20+ points in six of their seven games. USC wins because they have also averaged 36.4 points a game.
So, Vegas is saying, Wisconsin will certainly score more against the Trojans and we can assume USC will also score against Wisconsin but low enoguh that it won't be that high scoring. An over/under of 48.5 with only a 2.5 spread predicts the final score to be somewhere around 26-23.
It's an interesting matchup for Vegas to predict because USC's strength is the offense and their weakness is their defense. You can basically flip that for Wisconsin, whose defense has been pretty spectacular this season, especially when it comes to scoring defense. But the offense has been rocky at best and putrid at worst.
So, the odds feel interesting but pretty close to what you would predict, especially with Wisconsin being the home team and getting to host the USC Trojans.
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