The Utah State Aggies travel to Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City to face the Utah Utes in an interesting in-state rivalry. The line opened at Utah -12 with the total set at 47. At this writing the Utes have been bet up to -13.5 with the total bet down to 44. It’s a 9:oo PM EST kick and available on ESPN2.
Utah State entered the season with big expectations as the only team with any possibility of challenging Boise State in the Mountain West Mountain division. The Aggies returned a veteran outfit with 15 returning starters, nine on offense including three-year starting quarterback Chuckie Keeton. Utah State used life and death to win its opener, a 12-9 decision over Southern Utah as a 32-point favorite. Despite holding the Thunderbirds to just 163 yards of total offense, the Aggies managed just 260 yards of offense themselves and needed an 88-yard punt return late in the fourth quarter to escape with the win.
Utah stopped Michigan 24-17 (-5, 44) in a nationally televised game that featured the debut of Jim Harbaugh with the Wolverines. The Utes had the game and the cover pretty much in hand most of the way before yielding a window dressing Michigan touchdown in the final 30 seconds. The Utes are a strong defensive outfit, especially at home. The offense is not very explosive and prefers to grind things out behind big time back DeVontae Booker who was 1st Team Pac 12 last year rushing for 1512 yards and 10 TDs.
The Aggies haven’t had the success against Utah that they’ve had of late against BYU. In fact, the Utes have won 13 of the last 14 in the series. The Aggies have lost seven straight trips here with four of the last five by 16+ points. The last series meeting was here in 2013 with Utah (-1, 52) coming away with a 30-26 win in a game that was statistically dead even. Utah State was on a 14-2 run as a road dog under Gary Andersen who jumped ship for Wisconsin and is now at Oregon State. The Aggies are 3-5 as an away dog under current head guy Matt Wells.