{"id":524,"date":"2018-12-31T17:32:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T17:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/?p=524"},"modified":"2019-01-01T17:34:37","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T17:34:37","slug":"2018-gator-bowl-texas-am-v-nc-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/2018-gator-bowl-texas-am-v-nc-state\/","title":{"rendered":"2018 Gator Bowl Texas A&M v NC State"},"content":{"rendered":"
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squarelogo\/Shutterstock<\/p><\/div>\n

This year’s Gator Bowl\u00a0pitches an up and coming\u00a0SEC team in A&M against a slightly overachieving ACC one in North Carolina State who hit 9-3 largely thanks to a very favourable schedule. This could end up as one of the more one-sided\u00a0Bowls this year.<\/p>\n

Texas A&M has a great coach in Jimbo Fisher – who has done well to get them to 8-4 in his first\u00a0year in charge, and they have a monster at Running back in\u00a0Trayveon Williams. Schedule-wise\u00a0their losses have\u00a0been\u00a0close\u00a0generally\u00a0– including a\u00a0narrow 2 point loss to\u00a0Clemson and a\u00a04 point loss to Auburn. Being well beaten\u00a0by\u00a0Alabama is\u00a0the norm this\u00a0year\u00a0and losing to\u00a0Miss\u00a0State\u00a0is\u00a0nothing to\u00a0get\u00a0too upset about. Their wins\u00a0haven’t been astounding, but they did end\u00a0Kentucky’s\u00a0unbeaten season and of course, they edged that marathon against LSU 74-72. In non-conference play, they put a pretty good Power Five team in UAB firmly in their place, and we would rate NC State as being only a little better than the Blazers hence out confidence in this selection.<\/p>\n

NC State’s nine wins have\u00a0come against decent teams but nothing like the schedule AM has played. Their losses were not too shabby\u00a0either\u00a0in Clemson Syracuse and Wake Forest, however,\u00a0we\u00a0think\u00a0they will be\u00a0overmanned offensively and that\u00a0Finley\u00a0will struggle to\u00a0get anything going. Defensively they don’t stack up well against A&M who will\u00a0run the\u00a0ball control, the clock and\u00a0grind them down as\u00a0the\u00a0game\u00a0goes on.<\/p>\n

Our prediction is for Texas A&M\u00a0 to win 48-17.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Image Credit squarelogo\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This year’s Gator Bowl\u00a0pitches an up and coming\u00a0SEC team in A&M against a slightly overachieving ACC one in North Carolina State who hit 9-3 largely thanks to a very favourable schedule. This could end up as one of the more one-sided\u00a0Bowls this year. Texas A&M has a great coach in Jimbo Fisher – who has…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":383,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,24,13],"tags":[117],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atlantic-coast-conference","category-college-bowls","category-power-five","category-sec-southeastern-conference","tag-gator-bowl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}