West Virginia vs. Pittsburgh score prediction by expert college football model

This weekend brings us the 107th version of the Backyard Brawl as Pittsburgh looks to improve on its 2-0 start against West Virginia in college football’s Week 3 action on Saturday.

Pitt lost this game a year ago and slumped to a 3-9 mark, the worst record in head coach Pat Narduzzi’s time with the school, but quarterback Eli Holstein appears to have rejuvenated this offense so far, ranking 12th nationally in passing output and 28th in scoring offense.

West Virginia recovered from its season-opening loss to Penn State by routing Albany the week after and comes into this matchup as the slight favorite, needing to beef up an attack that ranks 74th nationally in scoring and 88th in passing production.

What do the analytics say about the matchup? Let’s turn to the SP+ prediction model to get a preview of how Pittsburgh and West Virginia compare in this Week 3 college football game.

The simulations currently favor the road team in this game, but by a very slim margin.

SP+ predicts that West Virginia will defeat Pittsburgh by a projected score of 30 to 27 and to win the game by an expected 3.1 points overall.

The model gives the Mountaineers a slight 58 percent chance of outright victory.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

How good is it this season? So far, the SP+ model is 47-44 against the spread with a 51.6 win percentage.

West Virginia is a 1.5 point favorite against Pittsburgh, according to the lines at FanDuel Sportsbook, which set the total at 63.5 points for the game.

FanDuel lists the moneyline odds for West Virginia at -126 to win outright and for Pittsburgh at +105.

If you’re using this projection to bet on the game, you should take …

Other analytical models take a different view and favor the Panthers over the Mountaineers.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Pittsburgh is projected to win the game outright in 52.6 percent of the computer’s updated simulations, while West Virginia comes out the winner in the remaining 47.4 percent of sims.

The index forecasts a very close game, but sides with West Virginia to be 0.7 points better than Pittsburgh on the same field, not enough to cover this spread.

West Virginia will win 5.8 games this season and sits sixth from the bottom among Big 12 teams with a 2.3 percent chance to qualify for the College Football Playoff.

The models project Pittsburgh will win 6.8 games and have a 3.4 percent shot at the 12-team playoff, ranking ninth in the ACC in that category.

When: Sat., Sept. 14
Time: 3:30 p.m. Eastern
TV: ESPN2 network

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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

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