{"id":8199,"date":"2010-09-25T16:49:55","date_gmt":"2010-09-25T21:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=8199"},"modified":"2010-09-25T16:56:36","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T21:56:36","slug":"college-football-picks-a-look-at-california-vs-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/college-football-picks-a-look-at-california-vs-arizona-8199\/","title":{"rendered":"College Football Picks: A Look at California Vs Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"

California Golden Bears at Arizona Wildcats, Arizona Stadium, Tucson, AZ
\nSaturday, September 25, 2010, 10:00 pm EST, TV: Fox Sports Arizona, Comcast Bay
\nOpening Line: Arizona -6 1\/2
\nCurrent Line: Arizona -6 1\/2
\nOpening Total: 56
\nCurrent Total: 57.5
\nMoney Line: Arizona -255 \/ Cal +215<\/strong>
\nBetting Lines from above taken from\u00a0Bookmaker Sportsbook<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
The Arizona Wildcats are home favorites of 6\/6.5 points depending on where you shop<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jeff Tedford leads the California Golden Before Bears into Tuscon to take on Mike Stoops and the Arizona Wildcats in the Pac-10 opener for both schools. Arizona is 3-0 after a good win against Iowa last week 34-27, while\u00a0California lost in Reno last week to Nevada 52-31, to fall to 2-1 this season. Cal has had success in recent years going 5-2 against the number in the last 7 meetings between the schools. The total has gone under in 4 of the\u00a0previous 6 meetings as well. The Pac-10 is loaded this year \u00a0with5 teams in the top 25, and with USC being on probation, the conference is wide open. Every game becomes critical and the winner of this game can jump out to an early lead in the conference.<\/p>\n

Last week California outgained Nevada 502-497.\u00a0However, 3\u00a0interceptions by\u00a0Bears quarterback Kevin Riley and 7 costly penalties doomed the\u00a0Bears in the 52-31\u00a0loss, after\u00a0convincing wins to open the season against UC Davis and Colorado for\u00a0Cal. Before the defense fell apart against Nevada, it had been\u00a0suffocating in the two routs against lesser opponents. The\u00a0Bears outscored UC Davis and Colorado by a combined score of 104-10, and allowed only 322 total yards. against the Wolfpack, Cal was gashed for 316 yards on the ground alone. If the defense plays like that against Arizona it could be a long night for the Bears, but we don’t know\u00a0 defensively which Bears team is the real one. Is\u00a0it the dominant unit that showed up in the first 2\u00a0games or the unit that was shredded by Nevada?\u00a0this game in Tucson will tell us a lot about the bears defensively. On offense the Bears are fine.\u00a0Riley was flawless until he\u00a0threw\u00a0those 3 picks against Nevada, throwing for 732 yards and 8 touchdowns so far this season. Shane Vereenleads the rushing attack with 324 yards and 6 touchdowns. He also has 6 catches for 55\u00a0yards and 2 touchdowns.\u00a0Riley also likes to throw it to receivers Marvin Jones (21 catches, 328 yards, 2 touchdowns) and Keenan\u00a0Allen (10 catches, 185 yards, 2 touchdowns.)<\/p>\n

Arizona jumped out to a huge lead last week against highly ranked\u00a0Iowa. They were up\u00a027-7 at halftime\u00a0and watched as the Hawkeyes tied\u00a0it up in the 4th quarter. Arizona blocked\u00a0the extra point that would have given Iowa the lead, and then scored on the next possession to win 34-27. Defense and special teams helped the Wildcats win that game as they returned an interception and a kickoff for a touchdown against Iowa. Like Cal, Arizona was stifling on defense in their first two games against lesser opponents,\u00a0Toledo and the Citadel outscoring them\u00a093-8, and only allowing 354 total yards in both games combined. The Wildcats only allowed 62 passing yards a game to both teams. Even against Iowa the defense wasn’t horrible. they only gave up 307 yards\u00a0to the Hawkeyes including 29 on the ground. However, the Wildcats committed 12 penalties and\u00a03 turnovers which allowed the Hawkeyes to get back into the game. They must protect the ball better against Cal. The offense is led by quarterback Nick\u00a0Foles who has thrown for 877 yards, 5 touchdowns, and 3 interceptions so far this season. The running game is led by Nic Grigsby who has \u00a033 carries, 187 yards and 5 touchdowns. Foles spreads the ball around as 4 Wildcat receivers have 11 catches or more, but Juron\u00a0Krinerhas the most yards with 284.<\/p>\n

These two teams must protect the\u00a0 ball better than they did last week. Arizona is riding high after the gutsy win over Iowa, but the Iowa win will mean nothing if they lose the conference opener at home.\u00a0 Maddux Sports has released college football picks for Saturday and this happens to be one of the games we gave our prediction on.\u00a0 Get these picks by visiting our college football predictions page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California Golden Bears at Arizona Wildcats, Arizona Stadium, Tucson, AZ Saturday, September 25, 2010, 10:00 pm EST, TV: Fox Sports Arizona, Comcast Bay Opening Line: Arizona -6 1\/2 Current Line: Arizona -6 1\/2 Opening Total: 56 Current Total: 57.5 Money Line: Arizona -255 \/ Cal +215 Betting Lines from above taken from\u00a0Bookmaker Sportsbook Jeff Tedford […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40249,"featured_media":4105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,1444],"tags":[578,2958,1923,2098,2950,740],"class_list":["post-8199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-football","category-headlines","tag-arizona-wildcats","tag-california-golden-bears","tag-college-football-betting","tag-college-football-picks","tag-fox-sports","tag-pac-10"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8199"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8227,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8199\/revisions\/8227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}