A pair of historic division rivals square off this weekend in a game that will help decide the leader in the SEC West division title race as No. 8 Alabama welcomes No. 14 LSU in college football's Week 10 action on Saturday.
The simulations favor the Crimson Tide to hold off LSU, but in a close game.
SP+ forecasts that Alabama will defeat the Tigers by a projected score of 32 to 26 with an estimated scoring margin of 5.8 points in the game.
The model gives Alabama a 63 percent chance to win the game outright, while LSU has the 37 percent shot to pull off the upset.
SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”
How good is it this season? So far, the SP+ model is 236-236-12 (50.0%) in straight-up game predictions and 223-252-9 (47.0%) in its picks against the spread.
Alabama is a 2.5 point favorite against LSU, according to the lines at SI Sportsbook, which set the total at 60.5 points for the game.
SI lists the moneyline odds for Alabama at -150 and for LSU at +120.
If you're using this projection to bet on the game, you should take...
Other analytic tools also favor Alabama to beat LSU in a close game.
That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.
The index projects Alabama will win the game in 62.4 percent of its simulations, while LSU comes out the winner in the remaining 37.6 percent of sims.
By taking the difference between each team's projected scoring margin per game, the computer predicts that Alabama will defeat LSU by 2.2 points, or rounding down, by 2 points, not enough to cover the line.
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When: Sat., Nov. 4
Time: 6:45 p.m. Central
TV: CBS network
Stream live: fuboTV (Try for free)
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