For Saturday’s Georgia Tech-Duke matchup, sports betting analyst Josh Nagel didn’t have a strong feel about the betting line – Tech was favored by 6 or 6 ½ points as of Friday afternoon – but leaned toward the Yellow Jackets to cover.
Nagel, who writes for the betting picks website Sportsline, cited as factors Duke not having safety Jeremy Cash (the All-American who was impactful in Duke wins the past two years), Tech's offense playing better and the Jackets being motivated by back-to-back losses to Duke and bowl eligibility.
That said, he was not particularly confident, as Duke has shown a propensity for effectively defending option teams (such as Army earlier this season) and also showed well in a loss to No. 5 Louisville, a game in which the Blue Devils would have had a chance to take the lead in the final two minutes if not for a roughing-the-kicker penalty. Duke was a 35-point underdog but lost by 10 points.
“How can you argue against that?” he asked.
According to covers.com, 54 percent of bettors were siding with Duke as of Friday.
Nagel is 2-1-1 in his recommendations on betting picks for Tech games this season. For the Georgia Southern game, he went with Tech to cover at 11 points, and Tech won 35-24, giving up a touchdown with 63 seconds remaining to make the game a push. Some bookmakers had the spread at 10 ½ points.
Wagering becomes harder at this point of the season, Nagel said, because more information becomes available about teams.
“Because of that, you’re not going to uncover any huge mistakes (in betting lines),” he said.
What he tries to do, he said, is get ahead of the curve on teams that are either underrated or overrated based on their records. He used Penn State as an example. Nagel figured that the Nittany Lions weren’t as bad as they looked in a 49-10 loss to Michigan. They were a push in a win over Minnesota, then beat Maryland convincingly as a home underdog before their upset of Ohio State last week.
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