It Will Be No Luau For The Bears In The Sheraton Hawaii Bowl

Cal vs. Hawaii, 8:00 ET

Merry Christmas Eve to all of you Outkickers. I hope that Santa is getting ready to come down your chimney and drop off all sorts of goodies for you and your family. I also hope that we get to put a bit in our own sack as we bet on yet another College Football Bowl Game! We have done pretty well with these, and for the first time ever, my goal is to bet on all of them - or at least offer a bet on each of them. On Christmas Eve night, we get a battle between California and Hawaii.

Cal comes into the game with a 7-5 record, assuring themselves that even with a loss here, they don't fall below .500 for the full season. This has been a challenging year for the Bears, but they certainly weren't without some bright spots. Looking at their schedule, they won the first three games against decent enough competition - Oregon State, Texas Southern, and Minnesota. Then they were absolutely rocked by San Diego State, losing 34-0. They took down Boston College, then they were destroyed by Duke in the next game. They had a tough end of the season, but they actually performed rather well. They had to face three ranked teams in the final four games, the only three ranked teams they faced all year. They went 2-1 in those games against ranked opponents, beating Louisville and SMU. They ended up losing to Virginia, though. While the team is fairly balanced, they certainly lean on throwing the ball more than running it. They have almost 100 more passing attempts this season than rushing attempts. However, they only had 17 passing touchdowns compared to 18 on the ground.

(Photo by Jacob Snow/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Hawaii will probably look at stopping the pass, or at least preventing as much as possible, so that the Bears can't get too many yards. If the Bears get into a flow with their passing game, it will open up some areas to run the ball. Overall, the Rainbow Warriors are actually pretty decent against both. They mostly have a bend-but-don't break approach to the game. For the year, the team went 8-4 and dropped games to Arizona, Fresno State, San Diego State, and UNLV. As you probably would expect, they lost three of those four games to road opponents. Their lone home loss was to Fresno State, where they lost 23-21. Most of their schedule was fairly easy matchup. I would think that maybe Arizona was the toughest game of all of them. It is a bit hard to judge who the best team that they played is. Hawaii is fairly similar to Cal because they like to throw the ball more than run it. The only difference is their passing game has produced 26 touchdowns, compared to just eight on the ground.

Usually when you have two teams that like to pass the ball, that means the game will be high scoring. A lot of clock stoppages and a lot of longer yardage plays are typically the results. The problem is that this game does have a ton of opt-outs and injuries that will definitely impact this. Cal fired their head coach. They are also missing a lot of receiving options and some key defensive players (a lot of them have been out for a portion of the regular season). Hawaii will be without their best receiver, another one of their very good ones, and then two key defensive players. I think there is too much going on for Cal, even with the missing pieces for Hawaii, they should be able to beat the Bears. Give me the Rainbow Warriors -112 on the moneyline. 

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