{"id":9088,"date":"2010-10-15T15:45:43","date_gmt":"2010-10-15T20:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=9088"},"modified":"2010-10-15T16:56:59","modified_gmt":"2010-10-15T21:56:59","slug":"maryland-terrapins-at-clemson-tigers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/maryland-terrapins-at-clemson-tigers-9088\/","title":{"rendered":"Free College Football Picks: Maryland at Clemson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maryland Terrapins at Clemson Tigers
\nSaturday, 10\/16\/10, 12:00 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN3
\nOpening Point Spread: \u00a0Clemson -13
\nCurrent Betting Line: \u00a0Clemson -14
\nOpening Total: \u00a048.5
\nCurrent Total: \u00a047
\nCurrent Moneyline: \u00a0Clemson -600 \/ Maryland +475<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Clemson<\/a>Maryland has won back-to-back games and is off to one of its best starts under head coach Ralph Friedgen.\u00a0 The Terrapins now begin a stretch of playing four of their next five games on the road and look to move to 2-0 in ACC play.\u00a0 During the 2009 season, the team scored its only conference victory against the Tigers, while going 6-3 against Clemson under Friedgen.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019ve played better than us,\u201d Tigers head coach Dabo Swinney suggested.\u00a0 \u201cLast year was a very difficult day.\u00a0 We had a bunch of turnovers.\u201d\u00a0 A win on Saturday would give Maryland its first 2-0 start in conference play since 2005, but it will not be easy considering the club has not won a ACC road game since 2008.\u00a0 The team is 7-9 ATS against conference opponents and the total is 4-13 Over\/Under in those games.<\/p>\n

The Terrapins offense ranks fourth in the ACC and 42nd nationally in scoring 31.8 points per game and is led by third-year offensive coordinator James Franklin.\u00a0 Maryland has done a much better job in accumulating explosive plays this year, nothing 30 thus far and have scored 12 touchdowns on those plays.\u00a0 In 2009, Maryland had just 13 scores off explosive plays for the entire season.\u00a0 After going +7.0 in turnover margin to end the season last year, the Terps have continued that success by ranking first in the ACC and sixth nationally in the category (+1.60).\u00a0 Maryland is +8 on the season and has won the turnover battle in all five games.\u00a0 Defensively, the unit has the best red-zone defense in the ACC and ranks sixth nationally, while also ranking first in the ACC in scoring defense (18.4 ppg).<\/p>\n

Clemson holds a 30-26-2 advantage in the series with Maryland and had won 13 of 14 prior to Friedgen\u2019s arrival in College Park.\u00a0 Five of the last six meetings have been decided by four points or less and the Tigers have dropped the last two contests by exactly three points.\u00a0 The team has struggled with penalties and turnovers the last two contests and Swinney is expecting the locker room to sort things out.\u00a0 \u201cI think we\u2019ve got the leadership that it\u2019s going to take to come out of it,\u201d he commented.\u00a0 \u201cI think the guys believe and if we stay committed to those little things, we\u2019ll be OK.\u201d\u00a0 Clemson may come out energized due to the school retiring number-28 in honor of star running back C.J. Spiller, as he is a rookie with the Buffalo Bills this year.\u00a0 The team is 0-3 ATS at home this year and 0-2 ATS as a favorite.<\/p>\n

The Tigers have started 2-3 or worse eight seasons in the last 25 years and came back to become bowl eligible six of those eight years.\u00a0 An interesting matchup in this contest will be Clemson versus Maryland in the red-zone.\u00a0 Offensively, the team has scored touchdowns 89 percent of the time this year (16-of-18) compared to last year when they scored just 28 touchdowns in 49 red-zone opportunities last year.\u00a0 Creating turnovers is also going to be a major category of interest due to the Terps\u2019 numbers, but the Tigers are tied for third in the ACC with seven interceptions.<\/p>\n

Bettors will be interested in playing the Terrapins due to their 6-1 ATS mark in seven games as a road underdog of 10.5 points or more, but the team is 2-5-1 ATS as a road underdog.\u00a0 Clemson fails to impress anyone with a 12-25 ATS mark as a favorite of 10.5 to 21 points.\u00a0 As for our free pick have to take Maryland getting anything better than 14 in this game.\u00a0 Off a bye the spot looks like a good one.\u00a0 For more free and premium winners visit our free college football picks page of the site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maryland Terrapins at Clemson Tigers Saturday, 10\/16\/10, 12:00 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN3 Opening Point Spread: \u00a0Clemson -13 Current Betting Line: \u00a0Clemson -14 Opening Total: \u00a048.5 Current Total: \u00a047 Current Moneyline: \u00a0Clemson -600 \/ Maryland +475 Maryland has won back-to-back games and is off to one of its best starts under head coach Ralph Friedgen.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":5049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[200,1444],"tags":[387,634,3374,1358,2481],"class_list":["post-9088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-football","category-headlines","tag-acc","tag-clemson-tigers","tag-dabo-swinney","tag-maryland-terrapins","tag-ralph-friedgen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9088","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\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9088"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9090,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9088\/revisions\/9090"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}