UL-Lafayette vs. Miss State Total Pick
Following their thumping of Kansas State last week, the Mississippi State Bulldogs will look to get to 3-0 on the new season with a victory over UL-Lafayette on Saturday night. Will the two teams combine for enough points to push the score over the betting total?
Game Snapshot
195 UL Lafayette Ragin Cajuns at 196 Mississippi State Bulldogs
7:30 p.m. ET, Saturday, September 15, 2018
Davis Wade Stadium, Starkville, Mississippi
Public Betting Trends
According to oddsmakers from online sports book BetNow.eu, the Bulldogs are 33-point favorites to beat the Ragin Cajuns The total, meanwhile, sits at 65.5 points. As of this writing, 72% of the public betting tickets wagered on this matchup are on the Bulldogs.
UL Lafayette Ragin Cajuns
Louisiana senior QB Andre Nunez completed 19 of 22 passes, throwing for 184 yards and two touchdowns in Saturday’s 49-17 win over Grambling. Nunez didn’t see any playing time in the fourth quarter, as the Ragin’ Cajuns were comfortably ahead of the Tigers at the end of three quarters. Nunez also rushed for 21 yards and a touchdown on five carries, and the 2018 debut was an impressive one for a player who appeared in just four games last season. Named co-starter with Levi Lewis earlier this week, Nunez took a step towards claiming the job as his alone Saturday night.
Mississippi State Bulldogs
Mississippi State redshirt senior QB Nick Fitzgerald went 11-for-27 for 154 yards, two touchdowns and an interception and ran for 159 yards in Saturday’s 31-10 win over Kansas State. In his return from a one-game suspension, Fitzgerald (6’5/230) and Kylin Hill were utterly devastating on the read-option, consistently shredding the KSU defense (Hill ran for 211 yards as the Bulldogs rolled up 372 on the ground). Mississippi State’s run game is going to be extremely tough to slow down this year. If we’re going to nitpick, we’ll just say that Fitzgerald still has a long way to go in the pocket. His accuracy was scattershot throughout the afternoon, despite some wide-open throwing windows. The Bulldogs will become truly scary if Joe Moorhead can turn Fitzgerald into a plus thrower in the pocket.
Betting Trends
UL Lafayette
The over is 5-0 in UL Lafayette’s last five games overall.
Mississippi State
The under is 4-0 in the Bulldogs’ last four games played.
Prediction
The Bulldogs are averaging 8.44 yards per play, which ranks fifth in the entire country. Nick Fitzgerald was not sharp a week ago in Manhattan where he completed just 11-of-27 passes with two touchdowns and an interception, but this offense is loaded. On the other side, the Ragin’ Cajuns have some offensive firepower of their own thanks to quarterback Andre Nunez, running back Trey Ragas and receiver JaMarcus Bradley. The play here is the over.
College Football Prediction: UL-Lafayette/Mississippi State over 65.5