Phil Steele Reveals His Best Bet on West Virginia’s Bowl Game vs. Memphis

On December 18, 2024By Littum

You better go ahead and get your nap so you’ll be able to stay up for tonight’s Scooter’s Coffee Frisco Bowl between the West Virginia Mountaineers and the Memphis Tigers.

As we do every week on the In the Gun podcast, we called college football expert Phil Steele to get his thoughts on WVU’s matchup.

“I think they have a chance provided everyone is focused on the game. Sometimes when you have an interim head coach, you might have the coaching staff looking for jobs sending resumes out, you wonder if players hit the portal. But with only four players in the portal so far, you get the feeling that they might be focused on the game. And if that’s the case, I think their offense is starting to roll. I just know 15 points against Texas Tech, but prior to that they had gotten some points.”

“Go back and watch the Memphis and UTSA game. UTSA pretty much had their way, with Memphis’ defense putting up 44 points. I really liked what I saw of Memphis against Tulane. I think it’s important to win ten games, especially when you’ve crushed all of your goals. They were a lot of pick to be the playoff team. Actually, I didn’t even have them to win the conference this year .But when they get into it Tulane game and win it, they can now reach 11 wins this year.

“They have a very potent offense. Seth Henigan is a dangerous QB and against that West Virginia secondary, you have to believe he’s going to put up some points. But I think West Virginia with Garrett Greene, with (Jahiem) White, with (CJ) Donaldson, I think they can put up some points as well. My best game here is probably to go with it. Sometimes these bowls are a crapshoot and you wonder who will be there, I know. that Memphis wants to be there. I think West Virginia wants to be there and that means it could be an entertaining game. And a lot of times when the game doesn’t matter like this, in bowl preparation and you have extra time to prepare for the bowl you’re going to see some trick plays some fourth down what the heck let’s go to it on fourth and one and sometimes that makes it a high scoring game we see that a lot of these bowl games that aren’t New Year’s Day, turns out to be high because of that factor.”

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