Sportsinteraction

Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Ball State +3½ +100 over Massachusetts 

7:00 PM EST. Wednesday night MACtion in Amherst, the natural habitat of the live underdog, and this one is a tale of two escalators passing in the night. Ball State has won back-to-back games for the first time since 2023, arriving with actual momentum and a defence that has started making opponents' lives miserable. Massachusetts is the corpse on the other escalator: a 4-0 start that has dissolved into four straight losses, each one featuring an offence that wheezes and strains to crack 20 points. The Minutemen are 1-3 in the MAC. The Cardinals are 2-2 in the MAC, playing their best football of the season, and somehow they're the ones catching points and getting paid even money to do it.

The engine of the whole thing is TJ Horton, who is what happens when a defence loads the box and guesses wrong. Horton has 425 rushing yards and nine touchdowns on just 68 carries , 6.2 yards every time he touches it, which means Ball State doesn't need third-and-manageable, they need third-and-anything and a crease. Behind him, Keldric Luster is the dual threat who makes scheming against this offence a genuine headache: 1,300 passing yards and nine touchdowns through the air, 257 yards and two more scores with his legs, and four different receivers over 200 yards  Donovan Hamilton, Jamarion McDougle, Isaiah Thacker, Jabari Smith — so there's no one guy to erase. Pick your poison in Amherst and the Cardinals will happily serve the other one.

Across the field, the UMass offence has shrunk down to a two-man act and a prayer. Pop Watson III (1,025 yards, eight touchdowns) throwing to T.Y. Harding (327 yards) is basically the entire show, and the ground game is a rumour — lead back Elijah Faulkner has carried it 89 times this season and found the end zone exactly once. You cannot protect a skinny home spread with a rushing attack that scores once a month, not against a Ball State defence that has stiffened up during this win streak and has spent the season collecting 15 sacks and six interceptions. When the Minutemen fall behind the chains  and lately they live behind the chains  the drive dies, the punt team jogs out, and Horton gets another crack at breaking one.

So the number makes no sense, which is exactly why we take it. Ball State is 5-3 against the spread this season, they win the game outright if the current form of both teams shows up, and if MACtion does what MACtion does and turns the fourth quarter into a coin flip, the hook on 3½ is the most valuable half-point in midweek football. UMass laying points in its current state is a team charging admission to a house that's still on fire. 

Sportsinteraction