Cincinnati Bearcats vs. East Carolina Pirates Bet Preview

The Cincinnati Bearcats travel to East Carolina on Friday afternoon to take on the Pirates at 3:30 p.m. on ABC. This will be the last regular-season game for each team, but the Bearcats will get one more chance to prove their worth in the American Athletic Conference Championship against Houston which is scheduled for December 4th on ABC.

The Bearcats hopes for the Playoff are falling into place after Oregon’s loss to Utah last weekend. It depended on how the committee ranked the Bearcats last night, but it seems that Cincinnati has a good chance of being the first Group of 5 team to make the Playoff if they are able to win out.

Last time out, the Bearcats took care of business with a decisive 48-14 victory against SMU which was supposed to be one of their toughest opponents of the season. East Carolina edged past Navy this past weekend with a 38-35 win at Navy.

Odds

Cincinnati is a 13.5 point favorite in this matchup against East Carolina with odds of -114 to win at that spread. East Carolina has odds of -107 at +13.5. The over/under for the game is 58 with odds of -107 to bet the over and -114 to bet the under.

The Bearcats are 1-4 against the spread in their past five games. The under has hit in four out of those five games. The Pirates are 6-1 against the spread in their last seven games and 4-2 in their last six games against the Bearcats at home.

Key to Victory for the Bearcats

Desmond Ridder was the first Bearcat ever to score a passing, rushing, and receiving touchdown in the same game in history. He will be Cincinnati’s main key to victory as the team typically performs well when he is hitting on all cylinders.

He had one of his best games last weekend in a while and needs to use this momentum to give the Bearcats another statement win against East Carolina this weekend to get them ready for a big matchup with Houston.

Key to Victory for the Pirates

This game will be a shootout, or a blowout and the Pirates will be hoping for the former. The Bearcats offense should be able to dismantle the Pirates defense, but the East Carolina offense is sneaky good.

They have the 22nd best passing offense and 52nd best rushing offense. Their offense combines to have the 17th most average yards per game. Quarterback Holton Ahlers and running back Keaton Mitchell will need to produce against a solid Bearcats defense to keep up.

Expected Outcome

No. 4 (yes that’s right No. 4!) Cincinnati is too talented on both offense and defense to lose this game. They have more to play for, but as we’ve seen in past weeks, every American team has circled their game against the Bearcats to try to play spoiler to their Playoff dreams.