2018 Birmingham Bowl AAC v ACC (At Large)
This years Bowl match up Memphis Tigers v Wake Forest Demon Deacons is an interesting one and slightly unexpected given that normally the SEC would have made their Bowl bow here. With all the potential tie-ins being unable to offer a team it was left to Wake Forest to fill in as an at-large team.
Anyway to the game, which still pits Group of Five against Power Five, and two teams who have played differing schedules and are coping with Injuries.
Wake Forest is 6-6 on the season and although to the casual observer this doesn’t look great, when you see who they have played it is actually quite credible. Two of these losses were against Notre Dame & Clemson – both in the National Championship playoffs and ironically playing each other in the Cotton Bowl; both also went 12-0. The other losses were against Syracuse who ended up ranked 20 in the CFP rankings (higher in the AP Poll), Boston College who are heading for a nice Bowl, Pittsburgh who reached the ACC Championship Final and Florida State – not the force of old with Jimbo Fisher at the helm but still no pushovers. So six losses all against Power Five teams and three of those against top 20 teams.
Win wise they have nice wins at NC State and Tulane who have already won the Cure Bowl and they have hung 50 plus points on the opponent in their other 4 wins. They finished the season well with a 59-7 demolition job on Duke and had star WR Greg Dortch beet fit they would probably be favourites.
Memphis has a better season wins wise racking up 8 and two of their losses were to undefeated UCF – including a heartbreaking (for them) 31-30 home loss and then 56-41in the AAC championship. The Loss against Tulane is a worry however they can go head to head with most teams when it comes to scoring and looked to be improving as the season wore on. They also tried their luck against an SEC team in Missouri and although they got soundly beaten they did rack up 33 points. Their best win was probably against Houston to cap off a nice four win to the regular season and in seven of their wins, they scored at least 47 points emphasising their powerful offence. Losing twice to UCF is no disgrace and they gave them quite a game both times.
Deciding here boils down to two factors –
Were Wakes losses better than the Tigers extra wins?
How will Wake hang with a high scoring offence without Greg Dortch?
Overall we think that losing your best WR in what might end out being a shootout will be hard to overcome and this we are siding with Memphis in what could be the highest scoring one so far.
Our prediction Memphis for the win 45-38
For those who like to keep track of these things, we are 8-2 so far in our predictions
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