Anyone else read Willie Bee's writeup on the main page today?

bigboydan · 01-02-2007, 05:17 PM

This was a very interesting read on tonights Wake Forest/Louisville game.

Both these teams have identical 8-4 records ATS this year, which even makes this game tougher to cap.

Anyone who missed the writeup here it is below:

Quote:

Louisville, Wake Forest clash in Orange Bowl
Game Time: 1/2/2007 8:00:00 PM

By: Willie Bee
http://www.sbrforum.com

For fans that didn’t get enough bowl action over the weekend, tonight’s Orange Bowl has an interesting matchup pitting Wake Forest from the ACC against Louisville of the Big East. The two schools bring a combined 22-3 record into this contest, with both sporting 8-4 marks ATS that brought a nice profit to their backers over the season.

It will be a night of firsts in the Orange Bowl this evening as the #5 Louisville Cardinals take on the #15 Wake Forest Demon Deacons.
Louisville, Wake Forest clash in Orange Bowl

The two schools are meeting on the gridiron for the very first time in the 8:00 p.m. kickoff to be broadcast on FOX. And both schools overcame early season injuries to key players to make their first ever BCS appearances.

Louisville (11-1) is playing in its ninth straight bowl game and second straight versus an ACC team. The Cardinals lost year’s Gator Bowl to Virginia Tech, 35-24. It will be Louisville’s 14th bowl appearance, and they bring a 7-6 postseason record into tonight’s contest.

Picked in the preseason to be a frontrunner in the Big East, Louisville suffered a bad break, literally, in their season opener against Kentucky on Sep 3 when tailback Michael Bush broke his right leg early in the third quarter of the 59-28 Cardinals win. Bush had already run for three scores and 124 yards before the injury ended his season.

But junior signal caller Brian Brohm and the running back tandem of Kolby Smith and George Stripling picked up the slack in Bush’s absence to lead Louisville to their BCS ending. Two weeks after the injury to Bush, the Cardinals soundly defeated then-#17 Miami (Fl), 31-7, and dropped then-#3 West Virginia by a 44-34 count to open play in November.

A tough 28-25 loss to a surprising Rutgers squad a week after the West Virginia game would be the only blemish on Louisville’s 2006 season. The Cardinals ended the season with convincing wins over South Florida, Pittsburgh and UConn, averaging over 42 points in those three games. Louisville ranked second in the NCAA on offense and averaged nearly 39 points per game for the season.

Wake Forest (11-2) will be making just its seventh bowl appearance in school history, and bring a 3-game postseason winning streak and 4-2 overall bowl record into the game. The Demon Deacons last appeared in a bowl game in the 2002 season, topping Oregon 38-17 in the Seattle Bowl.

Unlike the preseason publicity and press that Louisville received, Wake Forest basically got none. Coach Jim Grobe’s squad had to endure the loss of their starting quarterback Ben Mauk early in the season. And with their #2 signal caller also out the Demon Deacons had to turn to redshirt freshman Riley Skinner, #3 on their depth chart at the start of the season, to get them through their schedule.

Skinner ended the year with a 140.0 QB rating, throwing for 1780 yards and eight touchdowns against just four picks. Without the weapons that Brohm has around him with the Cardinals, Skinner and the Deacons will have to play mistake-free football in this one and rely on an underrated defense that allowed under 15 points per game to keep the score close.

Louisville is listed as 10-point favorites in tonight’s game, with the total in the 52-point range. Wake Forest is 3-0 against the spread in their last three bowl trips. The Demon Deacons went 8-4 versus the numbers in 2006, 7-1 when listed as the underdog. The Cardinals are 0-2 ATS in their last two bowl games and went 8-4 during the regular season ATS, all of them as the favorite.