The final weekend of the 2023 college football season is upon us, and that means there's one more game left on the schedule, and it's always one of the best. Our final Saturday on the gridiron finds Army and Navy squaring off on the same field in the final leg of the Commander-in-Chief Trophy in college football's Week 15 action.
Army has taken four of the last six games in the series, snapping what was a 14-game win streak for Navy before then, dating back to 2002. The rivals have split the last four meetings, 202. What can we make of the matchup? For that, let's turn to the SP+ expert prediction model to project the game.
Army vs. Navy prediction
The simulations predict that Army will win this classic rivalry game.
SP+ estimates that the Black Knights will defeat the Midshipmen by a projected score of 26 to 17 and to win the game by a forecasted 8.7 points.
The model gives Army a 69 percent chance to win the game outright.
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 381-354-14 (51.8%) in its picks against the spread after going 7-3 (70.0%) last week, its best performance of the season to date.
Point spread
Army is a 3 point favorite against Navy, according to the lines at SI Sportsbook, which set the total at 27.5 points for the game.
SI lists the moneyline odds for Army at -145 and for Navy at +125.
If you're using this projection to bet on the game, you should take...
- Army -3
- Knights to win -145
- Bet over 24.5 points
Computer prediction
Other analytic models also favor the Black Knights to defeat the Midshipmen.
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.
The index projects Army will win the game in 61.7 percent of its total simulations, while Navy comes out the expected winner in the remaining 38.3 percent of sims.
By taking each team's projected scoring margins into account, the computer predicts that Army will defeat Navy by an estimated 3.1 points, enough to cover the line.
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