South Carolina opens as nearly four-touchdown favorite
South Carolina opened as a huge betting favorite in next Saturday’s home matchup with Akron, according to lines released on Sunday.
Circa Sports installed the Gamecocks as a 27-point favorite over the Zips and set the over/under at 44.5 points.
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South Carolina, currently 2-1, is coming off a heartbreaking and controversial 36-33 loss to LSU at home on Saturday at Williams-Brice Stadium.
Meanwhile, Akron is 1-2 with blowout losses to Ohio State and Rutgers and a win this past weekend over Colgate.
A potential major factor in the game (and maybe the line) is the pending health of Gamecocks quarterback LaNorris Sellers.
The redshirt freshman was injured on one of the final plays of the first half against the Tigers on Saturday.
Sellers returned briefly in the second half but backup Robby Ashford played most of the final half and finished the game.
“He’s got a little bit of an ankle sprain, I think he’s going to be fine,” Shane Beamer said after the game.
“If he’s not going to be able to move like he wants to move, we’ll get him out, so that was the conversation. Just felt like Robby gave us a better opportunity because LaNorris certainly wasn’t 100 percent there in the second half,” Beamer added.
The fourth-year head coach will next speak to the media on Sunday evening on his weekly teleconference.
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“I think he just rolled up on my ankle, and then it’s kind of like my ankle – in the moment it was just like it was hurt,” Sellers said. “At halftime, they just took the tape off, looked at it, then they retaped it and figured out that nothing was really wrong. I was good to go.”
While he was testing out his ankle, Sellers explained what was going through his head.
“At the beginning, once they rewrapped it and everything, it was a different kind of tape that they used,” Sellers said. “I was just getting frustrated getting used to that because I wasn’t really used to the specific tape that they used. But after I had it on for a little bit, they told me it’s gonna take a while for me to get adjusted to it.
“And they put it on. I used it, and after you saw me frustrated, I was fine. Like five, 10 minutes after that I was fine.”
The Gamecocks and Zips are set for a 7:30 p.m. kickoff at Williams-Brice Stadium with ESPNU carrying the action.
