What's the early Penn State-Wisconsin point spread? Look-ahead lines are out for the Lions' next game
No. 3 Penn State is amid its final bye week of the season while Wisconsin is preparing for a trip to Northwestern this weekend. The two sides will meet next week for a primetime clash on NBC. Kickoff is set for 7:30 p.m. ET inside of what will likely be a sold-out 76,057-seat Camp Randall Stadium. Well before game day, two sports books have released early point spreads for the matchup.
FanDuel calls head coach James Franklin’s side an 11.5-point road favorite and sets the betting over/under total at 47.5 points. That implies, roughly, a 29-18 win for the visitors. DraftKings, meanwhile, lists the Lions as a 10.5-point favorite. It does not yet list a total.
Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings suggest the Lions could be roughly two touchdowns better once home-field advantage is factored in for the Badgers. Penn State owns an 11-9 all-time series edge over current head coach Luke Fickell’s program. It has won the last five contests against Wisconsin, two of which have been true road wins. Only one has been in the Franklin era, though, as PSU knocked off Wisconsin 16-10 in Madison to start the 2021 season. This will be the first meeting between the schools since.
Penn State is focused on improvement, not its ranking
Franklin was asked on Tuesday during his lone bye week news conference about how his program handles national hype internally. As expected, he said that they do so by not focusing on it.
“We just don’t really talk about it,” Franklin said. “We were 1-0 last week, and we’re appreciative of that. I don’t think we’ve talked about it one time in our building. We talked about another team’s ranking today, showing a clip from a game this past weekend, and just talking about the effort that the young man played with. But we don’t talk about that. Those things are out of our control. We really do not talk about it. Don’t spend any time talking about those things. We just focus on trying to get better.
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“And you know, I think so far, our guys have done a pretty good job of that. We’re going to have to do that again this week coming up. We’re going to be going on the road, night game, and another tough environment, Jump Around [at Wisconsin], all that good stuff. Really good program. Well coached. So we’re going to need to take another step this week, because these these road games are challenging.”
Penn State has instead centered its week so far on self-improvement while appreciating the timing of its second regular season week off.
“I just think when you talk about the middle of the season, game six, it’s a good point to have a bye,” Franklin said. “Sometimes you get a bye really early, sometimes you get a buy late, and not the best position for the bye to land, but this is at a good point. And then, obviously coming off a win, I’d probably feel very different if we hadn’t come off a win. But coming off a win, there’s good vibes. There’s good mojo. We got a chance to still learn and teach and grow after a win, which I think is a really important skill and tool for us all to learn.
“Like I talked about before, you shouldn’t need a setback to take a step forward, to have the maturity to work on the things that you need to improve on. So I think the staff is approaching it that way. I think that the players are approaching it that way. I thought today was a really good example of that.”
