{"id":8341,"date":"2010-09-30T12:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-09-30T17:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=8341"},"modified":"2010-09-30T00:07:22","modified_gmt":"2010-09-30T05:07:22","slug":"northwestern-wildcats-vs-minnesota-golden-gophers-betting-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/northwestern-wildcats-vs-minnesota-golden-gophers-betting-preview-8341\/","title":{"rendered":"Northwestern Wildcats Vs Minnesota Golden Gophers Betting Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Northwestern Wildcats at Minnesota Golden Gophers, TCF Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN
\nSaturday, October 2, 2010, 12:00 pm Eastern, TV: ESPN
\nOpening Line: Northwestern -6 1\/2
\nCurrent Line: Northwestern -5 1\/2
\nOpening Total: 53
\nCurrent Total: 55
\nMoney Line: Northwestern -230\/ Minnesota +190
\n<\/strong>You Can Bet This Game at Bookmaker Sportsbook who offers a 25% signup bonus!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
The Northwestern Wildcats are 5.5 point road favorites over the Minnesota Golden Gophers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Coach Pat Fitzgerald leads his Northwestern Wildcats to Minnesota to take on Tim Brewster’s Golden Gophers in the Big Ten opener for both teams. The Wildcats are 4-0 but haven’t played anyone yet.\u00a0The Gophers are 1-3.\u00a0Both teams played opponents from the MAC at home\u00a0last week. Northwestern narrowly beat Central Michigan 30-25, and Minnesota\u00a0lost to Northern Illinois 34-23. Besides the records, two other trends play in Northwestern’s favor.\u00a0Since 1992, the Wildcats are 28-14\u00a0against the spread in road games played on turf, and in the same period are 26-13 ATS in October\u00a0road games.<\/p>\n

Northwestern is 4-0 but has narrow wins over \u00a0Vanderbilt and Central Michigan along with\u00a0blowouts over Illinois St and Rice. The Wildcats had the game against Central Michigan in hand as they scored to make it 30-13 at the start of the fourth quarter. The Chippewas\u00a0scored the last 12 points of the game to make it seem closer than it was. It is hard to know what to make\u00a0of the Wildcats, as the schedule\u00a0has been pretty soft thus far. The offense is led by\u00a0Quarterback Dan Persa, who has thrown for over 1000 yards in 4 games along with 8 touchdowns and only one pick. \u00a0The running game is averaging 150 yards a game led by Persa who has 50 carries for 172 yards and two touchdowns in four games. It is sort of running back by committee as four other players besides Persa have at least 19 carries. The top running backs are Arby Fields (56 carries, 160 yards, 1 touchdown) and Jacob Schmidt who has only 101 yards but has 2 touchdowns run this season. Persa does spread the ball around but his top target is Jeremy Ebert who has 17 catches, 331 yards, and 4 touchdowns. Tight end Drake Densmore is also dangerous with touchdown catches. On defense the Wildcats have\u00a0some questions. They are only giving up 15\u00a0points a game, but almost 400 yards a game on defense.\u00a0The Wildcats are especially vulnerable against the pass, as they give up\u00a0more than 250 yards a game. The Wildcats have forced an impressive\u00a09 sacks and 12\u00a0turnovers so\u00a0far this season. The Wildcats do have issues protecting the quarterback as they have given up 11 sacks. All of those issues might not matter against Minnesota but it could be an issue as\u00a0they play the better teams in the conference later in the season.<\/p>\n

Minnesota has similar numbers to Northwestern. Both give up almost 400 yards a game while gaining\u00a0 just over 400 yards. Both are better at throwing the ball than running, and both struggle when trying to stop the pass They only have two sacks but\u00a0the Gophers\u00a0have forced 8 turnovers so far this season.\u00a0Quarterback Adam Weber has been solid this season but not spectacular, throwing for 1,005 yards, 7 touchdowns and 3 interceptions so far. The running game\u00a0is led by Duane Bennett who has 79 carries for 371 yards, and 2 touchdowns. Fullback Jon Hoese only 38\u00a0yards but he does have 3 touchdown runs this season. MarQueis Gray and Da’Jon McKnight are Weber’s top targets at receiver. Both have 3 touchdown catches each, but\u00a0Gray has 22 catches for 328 yards, while McKnight has 16 catches for 215 yards.<\/p>\n

Though Minnesota only has 1 win this season, Northwestern is not taking this team lightly. If the Wildcats want to contend for\u00a0 a conference title in the deep Big Ten, they need to shore up the defense. It might not matter against a rebuilding Minnesota team, but the Wildcats\u00a0will get destroyed if their defense falters against Ohio St, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Penn St, or Michigan St.<\/p>\n

Maddux Sports is currently on a 71% college football picks run for our members.\u00a0 Dont miss one more point spread winner from the best handicappers on the planet.\u00a0 Visit our winning college football picks page and get our 7 winners for this Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Northwestern Wildcats at Minnesota Golden Gophers, TCF Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, MN Saturday, October 2, 2010, 12:00 pm Eastern, TV: ESPN Opening Line: Northwestern -6 1\/2 Current Line: Northwestern -5 1\/2 Opening Total: 53 Current Total: 55 Money Line: Northwestern -230\/ Minnesota +190 You Can Bet This Game at Bookmaker Sportsbook who offers a 25% signup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40249,"featured_media":8368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,1444],"tags":[737,2289,1492,464,3119],"class_list":["post-8341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-football","category-headlines","tag-big-ten","tag-college-football-handicapping","tag-espn","tag-minnesota-golden-gophers","tag-northwestern-wildcats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8341","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=8341"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8376,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8341\/revisions\/8376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}