We get our first look at Big 12 football this weekend in Norman with what shows to be a lopsided affair on paper where The Wildcats opened as a 27.5 point underdog and have since moved to a 28 point underdog across the betting markets. I expect this line to keep ticking upwards as we get closer to game day and project it to close somewhere around the 29.5 mark as money keeps funneling in on Oklahoma.
This is a revenge game for The Sooners as they got clipped last year by this K-State team in Manhattan and spoiled their perfect season aspirations. I expect Riley and The Oklahoma offense to be firing on all cylinders coming out of the gate on this 11am kickoff game. With new a new QB in Spencer Rattler who completed 82.4% of his passes and had 4 touchdown passes to 3 different receivers in their first game against Missouri State, I’m projecting them to put up big points in the first half of this game and shut down Kansas State early with a dynamic offensive explosion.
In a game like this I will be interested in totals and team totals, specifically The Sooner offense who always put up the numbers in the team total side of things as they were ranked 8th last year in first half scoring averaging 21.6 points and had a 60% cover rate in first half team totals. The full game total on this game opened at 60 and has since moved to 60.5 with 96% of the betting tickets on the over. I expect this line to keep ticking upwards as well and close somewhere around the 62.5 mark. I jumped on the Oklahoma first half team totals early and got OU in the first quarter at over 10.5 points and the first half team total over at 24.5 with both at plus money.
Kansas State lost their first game of the season outright as 15 point favorites to Arkansas State from The Sun Belt Conference where they surrendered 489 total yards of offense and were giving up 6.9 yards per play. In contrast Oklahoma put up 608 yards of total offense against a Missouri State team that was just in the game to get a big pay day to help out their university. The Sooners covered a massive 38.5 first half team total and scored 41.
It is still early in the week for a game like this which as of now has less than 200 betting tickets, I expect that number to swell to around 6-7k by kickoff, Oklahoma is a big public backed team and are often heavy favorites in these conference match ups. Personally I don’t mess with the Oklahoma spreads, this is why I opt to focus on the totals and or team totals. Last year Oklahoma was 5-9 against the spread with a 35.7% cover rate.
The Play
Oklahoma Team Total 1st Quarter over 10.5 +105
Oklahoma Team Total 1st Half over 24.5 +105
#wmf
