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NIU, Ball State collide Wednesday night
By: Freddy Wander - StatFox
Published: 11/5/2014  at  4:15:00 AM
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NORTHERN ILLINOIS HUSKIES (6-2)
at BALL STATE CARDINALS (3-5)

Kickoff: Wednesday, 8:00 p.m. ET
Line: Northern Illinois -3, Total: 63

Two MAC teams look to extend their win streaks to three games on Wednesday when Northern Illinois visits Ball State.

The Huskies will play three of their final four contests on the road, but have not had too many issues away from home with a 3-1 SU record (2-2 ATS), losing only to Arkansas by a score of 52-14 as 13.5-point underdogs earlier in the year. Overall they are a mere 3-5 ATS while failing to cover in each of their past five games, including last week's 28-17 victory over 18-point underdog Eastern Michigan. NIU needed two fourth-quarter TDs to and 332 yards of rushing to hold off the Eagles. The Cardinals lost five of their first six games SU (2-4 ATS) to start the season, but have righted the ship with SU and ATS victories as the underdog in each of the past two weeks. First they pulled off a 32-29 upset at 9.5-point favorite Central Michigan, and followed that up with a solid 35-21 win while getting three points when they hosted Akron. Ball State scored the final 21 points in the contest as it forced five turnovers and totaled 380 yards of offense. The Huskies have dominated this series of late, winning SU in each of the past five seasons while going 3-2 ATS and averaging 41.8 PPG. Last year, Northern Illinois won 48-27 as an 8.5-point favorite despite trailing 24-20 at the half in a game where the two programs combined for 57 first downs and 1,063 yards of offense. As far as betting trends are concerned, the Huskies are 8-2 ATS since 1992 after gaining 75 or fewer yards through the air in their previous game while being a poor 0-6 ATS since the start of last season after two consecutive games where they forced one or less turnovers. Northern Illinois comes into this one without any missing players due to injury while HB Horactio Banks (hamstring), LB Ben Ingle (ankle) and DL Blake Dueitt (concussion) are all listed as questionable for the host Cardinals.

Which MAC team will extend its win streak to three on Wednesday night? For the answer, connect to College Football Best Bets for all the StatFox Experts picks throughout the 2014 regular season and bowl season. StatFox Gary is heating up with a 67% ATS mark (8-4) in Best Bets over the past four weeks.

What the Huskies fail to achieve in the passing game (195.5 YPG) is made up with an amazing rushing attack that gains 269.4 YPG (13th in nation) while aiding in scoring 31.6 PPG. QB Drew Hare (1,226 pass yards, 11 TD, 1 INT) has been efficient with his arm, but is more of a threat when running the ball as he has rumbled for 581 yards (7.6 YPC) and 5 TD on the ground while surpassing 160 rushing yards in each of the past two contests. Hare is the leading rusher while being joined by the tandem of HBs Cameron Stingily (477 rush yards, 5 TD) and Joel Bouagnon (414 rush yards, 5 TD) who have collectively averaged a solid 5.4 YPC. Stingily is more of the lead back with double-digit attempts in each of the past six games while going over the century mark twice. The one receiver to keep an eye on is WR Da’Ron Brown (662 rec yards, 5 TD) who has averaged 17.9 yards per catch and has three games over 125 yards. Their defense has not been terribly impressive while allowing 26.3 PPG and being led by the likes of LB Rasheen Lemon (52 tackles, 2.5 sacks) and DL Jason Meehan (30 tackles, 6 sacks).

The poor start to the Cardinals season can be attributed to their lackluster offensive performance while ranking worse than 75th in the FBS in both passing (212.0 YPG) and rushing (152.1 YPG) as they are scoring 26.9 PPG. They have gone 2-1 SU since switching to QB Jack Milas (749 pass yards, 5 TD) who has had at least 36 attempts in each of his first three starts. He is getting a mere 6.5 YPA, but has allowed the team a chance with the intelligence to not throw picks while being sacked just three times. HB Jahwan Edwards (828 rush yards, 8 TD) is a bell-cow with 22.3 attempts per game and has gone over 100 yards in 4-of-8 performances while also contributing as a receiver (173 rec yards, 9.6 avg). The one-two combo of WRs KeVoon Mabon (495 rec yards, 4 TD) and Jordan Williams (436 rec yards, 3 TD) can give opposing defenses headaches while combining to average 11.9 yards per catch. LB Ben Ingle (71 tackles, 2 TFL) and DB Eric Patterson (48 tackles, 3 INT, 1 sack) are bright spots on a defense that has allowed their opposition to score 26.6 PPG. If Ingle is unable to play through his ankle injury, that would be a big loss for this unit.


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