The road favorites could net win no. 5 on Saturday, according to Vegas.
Following up on a 4-1 start, including this weekend’s near-miss against Clemson, the Syracuse Orange open as 6.5-point favorites on the road this Saturday against the (not-at-all-rival) Pittsburgh Panthers, per VegasInsider.
SU hasn’t beaten Pitt on the road since 2001 (hey, that’s meaningful for a few reasons), and has only won three times in the 16 meetings in the series since. However, that does include last year’s 27-24 victory in which the Orange pass rush simply blitzed Pitt all game en route to the close win.
While Syracuse has started hot this year, Pitt has seemingly been going the opposite way. Following a 33-7 win over Albany in the opener, the Panthers were smoked by Penn State, then squeezed out a close win over Georgia Tech, before two straight losses to North Carolina and UCF. They’re not necessarily in a free fall, but at 2-3 (1-1 in the ACC), they’re in desperate need of a victory to turn the season around before the heart of the Coastal schedule comes up.
The Orange are 5-0 against the spread this year, by the way, and 2-0 against the spread on the road. That’s apropos of nothing, really. Just a fun bit of information to share. We’ll see if this line rises over the course of the week, as SU hopes to score a win and potentially vault into the top 25 for the first time in 17 years.
