Friday, May 18th, 2012
The 2011 Independence Bowl matchup will pit the North Carolina Tar Heels (7-5) against the Missouri Tigers (7-5) in a December 26th showdown.
Kickoff is set for 5:00 PM ET and this will be the first game of the college football bowl season that is shown on ESPN2 instead of ESPN.
Although both North Carolina and Missouri have been strong at home this year, the two have combined to muster up just a 3-8 record away from home.
The Tigers are currently 5-point favorites and have been bet up from an opener of -3.5 on the strength of roughly 60% of tracked bets.
The total of 52.5 has moved up just half of a point after debuting at 52, and each team in the Independence Bowl has gone over and under exactly 6 times on the year.
Missouri seems to be playing better after winning 4 of 5 against Kansas, Texas Tech, Texas, and Texas A&M.
Their lone loss during that span was a 3-point defeat at Baylor, but yet the Tigers have covered the point spread in just 2 of their last 6 overall.
Missouri has been playing some low-scoring games recently and has gone under in 3 straight.
North Carolina has covered the point spread in 3 of their last 4 but has managed to win outright in just 2 of their previous 6 games.
The Tar Heels have lost outright in all 3 games on the year in which they were listed as the underdog, but will try to reverse that trend against Missouri.
North Carolina games have gone under in 2 of 3.
Missouri scores 32.2 points per game while averaging 473.2 total yards on offense, and that bests the 28.3 and 396.6 that North Carolina has amassed on the year.
The Tigers and Tar Heels have both allowed an average of 23.5 points per game, although Missouri has given up nearly 30 more yards each time out.
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