USC Total Wins Pick | O/U Bet

A Rude Welcome Awaits USC in Their New Home

The oddsmakers have hung a 7′ on Lincoln Riley and his USC team for their Regular Season Win total in 2024.
Riley’s been a college head coach for seven seasons, five with Oklahoma and two with USC. His records?
He has three 12-2’s, one 11-3, one 10-2, one 9-2, and one 8-5.
Notice something about those records when matched up against this year’s number?
The win total on every one of them is higher than this year’s number.
Take off one win for their Bowl victories, and looking at just their regular regular season wins, the total on six of the seven is higher than this year’s number of 7′.
Makes taking the Over look easy, doesn’t it?
Not for me.
I’ve looked at their schedule from every angle and I see a tough road ahead to get to eight wins.

Yes, seven straight years of eight or more wins is concerning, but Riley’s in a different division this year. As sports fans know, USC has abandoned the Pac-12 and moved into the Big Ten. For me, this is bad news because the Big Ten was removed from my television market (each year, the cable bill goes up, and the channel choices go down.)
Now I only get to see Big Ten teams if they’re on one of the major networks (or if I pay the cable company an additional fee for a channel that used to be part of my basic package, and that ain’t going to happen. It’s not the money it’s the principle.)
The move from Pac-12 to Big 10 is a minor inconvenience for me, but I sense it will be major trouble for the Trojans.
Let’s look closer at the division switch.

USC went 7-5 in the Pac12 in the 2023 regular season. Certainly, winning one more game to get to the eight needed to go Over this year’s total shouldn’t be a difficult stretch.
Except for this – not ONE of the seven teams they beat last season is on this year’s schedule.

Also not helping – against the three teams they face this year that were on last year’s schedule, USC went 0-3.
And all three losses were by double digits.
And all three losses came when they had all-world quarterback and former Heisman winner Caleb Williams, who is now with the Chicago Bears.

To make a case for the Over 7′ you can point to USC’s having a winning record against every original Big Ten team in their new division except Michigan State, who they’re tied with it at 4-4.
But that’s a weak limb to crawl out on.
It’s been four years since they played anyone in the Big Ten so their past records against them are pretty much irrelevant.

Having Lincoln Riley as head coach is a big plus for the Trojans, although a recent quote of his isn’t inspiring much confidence. “I’m not a magician. I can’t wave a magic wand and have everything be perfect right away.”
Is that typical coach-speak intended to lower expectations, or genuine concern on his part because he’s not sure how his team’s going to perform with a new quarterback AND in a new division in 2024?
I think the “right away” part is particularly telling. It’s almost like he’s saying in advance of the season that he’s going to need more time to rebuild; it’s as if he knows he’s in for a difficult time in 2024.

This is his third year with USC.
Year one they were 11-3
Year two they dropped to 8-5.
Pressure to produce immediate results has always been high in college football but in current times, with the transfer portal, the pressure is even greater. Going into year three Riley needs to win big. And he’s in a tough spot.

Will USC find Big Ten teams to be easier or more difficult than their former Pac-12 mates?
Pac-12 is not known for their defense.
Big Ten is known for their defense.
And therein lies the reason why I’m not concerned about Riley’s 11-3 and 8-5 records at USC.
Last year, his seven regular season wins came against teams with a combined average of 31 PPG on defense.
The average for the teams he’ll be facing this year is 21.2, a 10-point differential.

Instead of his offense beating up on teams like Stanford (37.7 PPG on defense), Colorado (34.8 PPG), and Nevada (33.4 PPG) they’ll be facing teams like Michigan (10.4 PPG) Penn State (13.5 PPG) and Nebraska (18.3 PPG.)

On the other side of the ball, adding new defensive coordinator D’Anton Lynn should lead to a much-improved defense for the Trojans.
It has to – they finished last year ranked 121 out of 133 teams, giving up a whopping 34.4 PPG.
Can’t get much worse, right?

So the questions are: how will the offense fare when they start facing defenses that aren’t sieves, and how much and how quickly will the defense improve?

Taking a look at the quarterback situation it looks like fourth year player Miller Moss is the most likely candidate to take over for Williams. He saw very limited time last year, picking up a little late-game backup duty in blowouts, completing a respectable 23 for 32.
Miller only had one start on the season and his performance in it is slightly concerning to me as I take USC Under. In the first start of his career, in the 2023 Holiday Bowl versus Louisville, Miller was an absolute baller. He went 23-33, 372 yds, and set a new Holiday Bowl record with six TD’s. The Trojans put up 42 points in that game, almost double Louisville’s defensive PPG average.
Scary stuff indeed.
But Louisville ain’t no Big 10 defense.

If the kid can put up those kind of numbers in his first start, on the big stage of a bowl game, you have to wonder how good he’s going to be now that he’s the number one quarterback and will get all the preseason practice reps with the first stringers. (I bet he wishes he was still in the Pac-12.)
USC catches a break in that they don’t have to face Ohio State, Oregon or Iowa, but they get Michigan on the road, and in their season opener they get SEC powerhouse LSU, with the Tigers already a -6 point favorite, a line that will likely be a full TD by kickoff.

Analyzing the rest of their schedule I see three pushovers that can confidently be marked as a win: Utah State, Rutgers, and Minnesota.
They have two mid-level threats in Nebraska and Maryland. Even if they go 5-0 in those games (and Maryland and Nebraska are no gimmes), where are they going to get three more wins?

The rest of their schedule consists of three teams who most preseason rankings have listed in their top 10, Michigan, Notre Dame and Penn State.
LSU and Washington are rated top 15.

If USC goes 1-4 in those five games, and goes 5-0 against the weak teams mentioned above, it gets them to 6-4 which means they have to win BOTH of the other two games on their schedule to go over 7′.
Those two games are against UCLA and Wisconsin, both ranked in the 20-25 range, the same area where USC is ranked. And UCLA beat Riley last year by double digits.

I can’t see eight wins for them.
If you agree, here’s another option to consider – our sponsor XBet is offering a very interesting offshoot for USC, their conference win total.

They’ve set the number at 5′, Un -129, Ov +106.
The higher price on the Under tells you that XBet leans towards five or fewer wins in conference play.
Which is a better choice, Un 7′ all games or Un 5′ conference games only?
Let’s break it down.
USC has nine conference games.
They need to win six for a bet on the Under 5′ to lose.
They have three non-conference games: LSU, Utah State, and Notre Dame.
The Trojans are already a 6 point underdog to LSU. The early line projection on Notre Dame has the Irish as Road Favs -3′.

My calculations on the Under 7′ are based on USC going 1-2 in those two tough non-conference games, easily beating Utah State but losing to LSU and Notre Dame (who beat them by 28 points last year.)
IF my analysis is correct and they go 1-2 in non-conference play, that means they’d have to win 7 conference games to go over 7′.
The XBet Under 5′ would only need six conference wins to go over.
To me the choice is clear – full schedule they need seven conference wins to beat me, conference schedule they only need six.

The first game of the season for many college teams tells you nothing as you often get powerhouses facing sacrificial lambs put on the schedule for confidence building purposes.
But that’s not the case with USC this year.
Up first is a visit from LSU. How they play in that game will give a strong indication of what their season’s going to be like.
GO TIGERS!

USC Un 7′ games, +100