#156 ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* Virginia Tech Money Line -121 over Miami, FL, Saturday at 12:00 Noon ET - With money line available as low as -120 range on this one that makes sense here rather than laying the -2 for those of you who have access to the money line. We really feel this Va Tech team is undervalued overall with a 4-3 record. Apparently the oddsmakers agree is the Hokies are favored in this game vs a Miami team that is ranked 9th in the country. With that the majority of tickets (70% plus) are coming in on Miami which is to be expected. Let’s bet the underdog that is ranked in the top 10. Seems easy. On top of that VT was upset at home last week by Liberty. Makes this even easier to side with the Canes right? There is a reason the Hokies are favored in this game. Offensively they are very tough to stop as they are the 4th best rushing team in the nation averaging 278 YPG (6.4 YPC) and they are in the top 20 in offensive efficiency at over 7.0 YPP. Starting QB Hooker returned to full strength 4 games ago and he provides a huge threat running the ball (6.3 YPC) as well as throwing (67% completion rate for 870 yards). They should be very successful vs a Miami defense that is allowing 148 YPG on the ground. Looking further into that, if you throw out the game the Canes had vs Pitt who is a terrible running team (112th nationally out of 123), Miami is allowing 187 YPG on the ground in their other 5 ACC contests. Now they face the best rushing attack they’ve seen this season. The Canes defense has also been shredded for over 400 total yards in all 3 road games they’ve played this season. We’re not sold on Miami. They are a good team but overrated in our opinion. Two of their last three games were played vs teams that did not have the starting QB available (NC State & Pitt). Last week they trailed NC State, without their starting QB, for most of the game including by 10 points in the 4th quarter. They scored on a 54 yard pass with just over 2:00 minutes remaining to pick up the 44-41 win. A week earlier they struggled at home with a 2-4 Virginia team coming out on top 19-14. The one good team they played this season, Clemson, blasted them 42-17 and outgained the Canes by 340 yards! We’re not saying VT is Clemson, but this is definitely the 2nd best team Miami has faced this season. VT’s defensive numbers aren’t great, but they do get to the QB very well (top 15 nationally in sacks per game). Miami’s offensive line hasn’t been very good this year and despite their mobile QB King, they are still 88th in sacks allowed per game. Their RB’s haven’t been very good averaging just 4.5 YPC and QB King is nearly their leading rusher (2nd leading rusher 2 yards behind RB Harris). If you can focus on King and slow him down, this Miami offense is in trouble. They rely too heavily on one guy. This is the 2nd of back to back games for Miami and they’ve been dealing with some Covid issues and had a few starters out last week including on the offensive line. Head coach Manny Diaz said it’s been so bad in recent practices they’ve had grad assistant coaches lining up at DB and kickers taking on the role of WR’s on the scout team. We love looking at unranked home teams favored over ranked road teams, especially teams in the top 10. Other things must obviously fall into place as well and we feel they have for this one. This season unranked home teams favored over ranked road teams are 58-40 ATS. Last year there were 2 games all season in which a team with at least 3 losses was favored at home vs a team with 0 or 1 loss and the home team won both of those games. We expect Virginia Tech to come out and play with a purpose after blowing their home game last week vs Liberty (were they looking ahead to this one?). The Hokies get the home win and cover.