{"id":531,"date":"2019-01-01T18:32:17","date_gmt":"2019-01-01T18:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/?p=531"},"modified":"2019-01-01T21:01:59","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T21:01:59","slug":"2018-citrus-bowl-penn-state-v-kentucky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/2018-citrus-bowl-penn-state-v-kentucky\/","title":{"rendered":"2018 Citrus Bowl Penn State v Kentucky"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-342 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2018\/12\/By-squarelogo-300x293.jpg\" alt=\"Five Minutes Spare College Football\" width=\"300\" height=\"293\" \/><\/a><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">2018 Citrus Bowl Big Ten v SEC<\/h2>\n<p>The 2018 Citrus Bowl is going to be an intriguing one given the differing preseason expectations between these two and also the styles of play. Penn State were expected to be serious playoff contenders, however, their season stalled in that crazy game against Ohio State, and thereafter it seemed like they were going through the motions at times. Kentucky on the other hand probably had bowl\u00a0eligibility as a target given they have not really competed in the SEC since the 1970s. However to the surprise of many, they bounced out 5-0 including wins over Florida &amp; Miss State, and at one stage had a potential path to the playoffs open which ended abruptly against Georgia. The following\u00a0loss against Tennesee was probably a hangover from this and they hen rounded\u00a0out the season with a couple of fairly easy wins.<\/p>\n<p>They have reached the Citrus Bowl largely on the back of some power running by Benny\u00a0Snell and a solid defence and this should ensure that they hang with Penn State.<\/p>\n<p>The preseason hype for PSU took a bit of a battering in their opener against Sun Belt side Appalachian State who took them to\u00a0OT before succumbing, and although they looked to be back on track &#8211; racking\u00a0up 177 points in their next 3 wins, they had a confidence-sapping\u00a01 point loss to arch rivals\u00a0Ohio State &#8211; thanks largely to some appalling\u00a0play calling, and their\u00a0playoff hopes ended the following week against Michigan State. They went 5-1 in their last six but that included a solid drubbing by Michigan. Overall Penn State showed they were too good for run of the mill teams but when they played the contenders they were somewhat lacking.<\/p>\n<p>Overall Kentucky look the more\u00a0battle-hardened of the two and in what could be a close game a better defence and a star running back can often be the difference<\/p>\n<p>Our prediction is for Kentucky to win 30-17<\/p>\n<p>Image Credit squarelogo\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; 2018 Citrus Bowl Big Ten v SEC The 2018 Citrus Bowl is going to be an intriguing one given the differing preseason expectations between these two and also the styles of play. Penn State were expected to be serious playoff contenders, however, their season stalled in that crazy game against Ohio State, and thereafter&#8230;<\/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":[7,24,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-ten-conference","category-power-five","category-sec-southeastern-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","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=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/533"}],"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=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveminutesspare.com\/ncaacollegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}