SP+ Predicts Georgia Tech vs Virginia Score

Georgia Tech has yet to win consecutive games this year, but they are going to be tasked with doing that on the road against Virginia. The Cavaliers are playing well over the past few weeks after a bad start to the season. They upset North Carolina a couple of weeks ago and outplayed Miami in a loss over the weekend. Tony Elliott has done a good job of rallying this team and getting them to play better, especially on offense.

Georgia Tech has not played well as a favored team under Brent Key and the good news for the Yellow Jackets is that they are going to be underdogs this weekend to the Cavaliers according to the Sportsbooks, but not the analytics.

In Vegas, Georgia Tech is 2.5 point underdog on the road this week, but in Bill Connelly's SP+, Georgia Tech is the smallest of favorites on Saturday. SP+ has the Yellow Jackets favored by one point and winning the game with a score of 27-26. SP+ gives Georgia Tech a 51% chance to win the game on Saturday.

WEEK 10 SP+ PICKS

UGA 34, Mizzou 20
Bama 32, LSU 26
UW 35, USC 32 (uh, try 55-52)
Texas 31, K-State 24
Ohio St 32, RU 14
Ole Miss 27, A&M 24
ND 27, Clemson 22
OU 34, OSU 25
Louisville 31, VT 18
Michigan 43, Purdue 7https://t.co/fjsWyQPXfP pic.twitter.com/q7HpCtFhSE
— Bill Connelly (@ESPN_BillC) October 29, 2023

So what exactly is SP+ and what goes into making these rankings? Here is how ESPN's Bill 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.

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."

Georgia Tech vs Virginia will kick off at 2:00 p.m. this Saturday on the CW Network.

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