The college football season rolls along this week with a number of notable matchups across the Power 4 and Group of 6 ranks. One of the most consequential games on the slate comes in the Big Ten, where we’ll see the Ohio State Buckeyes travel to the west coast to take on the USC Trojans in a massively important game for both sides.
Ohio State is fresh off a bye week following a pretty fortunate win over Indiana the week prior. On the other side, while USC is coming off a very disappointing loss to Wisconsin a week ago, the market is actually indicating that the Trojans are the right side in this game. Below is my preview, prediction, and pick for Saturday’s college football game between Ohio State and USC.
Ohio State is a 6.5-point favorite for this matchup with the total listed at 51.5 at DraftKings Sportsbook. Let’s dig into the odds and my best bet on Saturday’s matchup, and don’t miss our complete coverage of all of the Week 9 college football action at DraftKings Network.
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Ohio State vs. USC Prediction
Despite the fact that they only have one loss on the season, the Buckeyes have not been a powerhouse by any means. This is a team that clearly lost a lot of talent from last season’s elite roster, and it’s shown up most on offense to this point. Ohio State was able to gut out a victory against Indiana two weeks ago in a massive result for the Big Ten title race, but that win was not without incident. Ohio State quarterback Julian Sayin was injured in the win over Indiana and he’s now expected to miss the remainder of the season. We saw a bit of his backup — Luke Fahey —in the later stages of that game, and it wasn’t pretty.
It’s hard to accurately price the loss of Sayin, but I’d put it at around a touchdown drop-off for this offense given what we saw in Fahey’s brief stint two weeks ago. Even though the Buckeyes are fresh off a bye heading into this week, I fully expect Ryan Day and his offensive staff to lean on their ground game and keep things simple for Fahey in a game of this magnitude. This offense appears to be a real work in progress and USC’s defense should be primarily focused on slowing down Jeremiah Smith by any means necessary. If the Trojans are even remotely successful in that endeavor, it’s hard to see Ohio State exceeding 24-27 points.
As for the USC side of things, Lincoln Riley’s offense should be much better at home this week compared to its pathetic showing against Wisconsin a week ago — almost by default. However, I still don’t expect that we’ll see many explosive plays in this game given the profile of this Ohio State defense. Furthermore, I suspect that USC will look to run the ball and shorten the game a bit so it can maintain control of the game and minimize the chance of any potential explosive plays from Smith and company.
Ohio State vs. USC Best Bet
While I lean toward USC as my preferred side in this matchup, I’d need at least a full touchdown to bet the Trojans. Instead, a bet on the under has the ability to be correlated with whichever team comes out on top in this one. Regardless of result, the game script should skew toward a lower-scoring affair than what the market projects, so I’ll grab this under while it’s still above 51 — one of the most key numbers in totals.