SP+ predicts Georgia Tech vs. Louisville score

Who will win Friday night's game between Georgia Tech vs Louisville?

Author:
Jackson Caudell
Publish date:
Aug 27, 2023 8:43 PM EDT

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Georgia Tech vs. Louisville is one of the big games of the week one slate in college football and both teams are coming into this game with hopes of starting the season 1-0. Expert predictions for the game are starting to roll in and the latest from ESPN's Bill Connelly and his SP+ system have the Yellow Jackets not having a good night on Monday.

SP+ projects that Louisville will win the game 31-15, a margin of 16 points. Currently, Louisville is projected as a 7.5-point favorite on most sportsbooks.

So what exactly is SP+ and what goes into making these rankings? Here is how Connelly formulates his rankings in his own words:

"I base SP+ projections on three primary factors, weighted by their predictiveness:

1. Returning production. The returning production numbers are based on rosters I have updated as much as possible to account for transfers and attrition. The combination of last year's SP+ ratings and adjustments based on returning production make up about half of the projections formula

2. Recent recruiting. This piece informs us of the caliber of a team's potential replacements (and/or new stars) in the lineup. It is determined by the past few years of recruiting rankings in diminishing order (meaning the most recent class carries the most weight). Beginning this season, I am also incorporating transfers -- both the quality and the volume -- in a different way. After last season's transfer-heavy recruiting shift, I've got a bit more data for how to handle that. This piece makes up about one-third of the projections formula.

3. Recent history. Using a sliver of information from previous seasons (two to four years ago) gives us a good measure of overall program health. It stands to reason that a team that has played well for one year is less likely to duplicate that effort than a team that has been good for years on end (and vice versa), right? This is a minor piece of the puzzle -- only about 15% -- but the projections are better with it than without.

I will update these numbers in May and August, after further transfers and roster changes have come about (and after I've had a bit more time to tinker with handling transfers and other factors). But for now, let's look at what SP+ has to say about the college football landscape.

A reminder on SP+: It's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren't intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date."

Recent history is not going to be in Georgia Tech's favor and I think that is skewing their results for this season, but I think they can hang around in this game more than most think. Louisville is going to be breaking in several new starters under first-year head coach Jeff Brohm and there are questions I have about the defensive front for the Cardinals. Brohm is an excellent coach and his offense should be good and it will no doubt be a tough first test for the Yellow Jackets at the start of the Brent Key era.

This team plays hard for Key and you can look at wins over Duke, North Carolina, and Pitt last year as examples. All of those teams won nine games last year and Tech was a three-touchdown underdog in two of those games.

It should be a good game at Mercedes Benz Stadium on Friday night and whoever wins will carry the early season momentum.