Holiday Bowl Preview: Baylor vs UCLA
Tonight’s Holiday Bowl game between the Baylor Bears and UCLA Bruins is one of the best bowls of this week. The Bears are coming off a season where they had to replace a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback, who we have all seen was really, really good. The Bears offense hardly seemed to miss a beat. It just took a little while for the defense to catch up. Baylor lost (and won) some games early in the year that looked like basketball scores instead of football scores.
Baylor scored at least 40 points in nine of their twelve games this season. Since they were 7-5, that tells us they lost some of them. The Bears allowed at least 34 points in eight of the last ten games. Baylor beat Independence Bowl bound Louisiana-Monroe 47-42, lost to Pinstripe Bowl bound West Virginia 70-63, lost to Alamo Bowl bound Texas 56-50, lost to Cotton Bowl bound Oklahoma 42-34, beat Texas Tech 52-45 and beat Heart of Dallas Bowl bound Oklahoma State 41-34. Their biggest win of the season was on November 17th when they beat the unbeaten #1 ranked Fiesta Bowl bound Kansas State Wildcats 52-24.
Baylor comes into the game on a three-game win streak, all over bowl bound teams. Their quarterback Nick Florence passed for 4121 yards and 31 touchdowns with only 13 interceptions. Their top running back is Lache Seastrunk who rushed for 864 yards and six touchdowns. Glasco Martin rushed for 791 yards ans 12 touchdowns. Baylor’s offense is prolific, but that defense is Swiss Cheese.
UCLA finished the season 9-4, including the championship of the PAC 12 South Division. The Bruins only bad loss was to the Cal Golden Bears 43-17. They lost their last two games to Rose Bowl bound Stanford 35-17 to end the regular season and a week later in the PAC 12 Championship Game 27-24. Their other loss was to Alamo Bowl bound Oregon State 27-20.
UCLA had wins over Armed Forces Bowl bound Rice 49-24, Capital One Bowl bound Nebraska 36-30, Fight Hunger Bowl bound Arizona State 45-43, New Mexico Bowl champ Arizona 66-10 and Sun Bowl bound USC 38-28.
Brett Hundley passed for 3411 yards and 26 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. But their offense is built around running back Johnathan Franklin who ran for 1700 yards and 13 touchdowns. He averages 6.3 yards per carry. Going up against Baylor’s porous defense has to be very exciting to Franklin.
Intertops has Baylor +3 1.87 or 2.25. UCLA is -3 1.95 or 1.69. Over/under is 82.5. We love the over in this one. Holiday Bowls are known for their offense and this will be no exception. We also like the Bruins -3 because they are most likely to get a stop when they need one.
