The Sheraton Hawaii Bowl is a Christmas Eve classic every single year, and here at Bankroll Sports, we are set for our Hawaii Bowl keys to the game, which will help you with all of your Nevada Wolf Pack vs. Southern Miss Golden Eagles predictions and picks!

Hawaii Bowl: Nevada Wolf Pack vs. Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles
Hawaii Bowl Location: Aloha Stadium, Honolulu, HI
Hawaii Bowl Date/Time: Saturday, December 24th, 8:00 p.m. (ET)
Hawaii Bowl Television Coverage: ESPN, ESPN3.com

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Key #1: The Wolf Pack must find running room with the Pistol
The days of QB Colin Kaepernick, RB Vai Taua, and RB Luke Lippincott are long since over with for the Wolf Pack, and now, they have to take a team that really is completely new offensively into the Hawaii Bowl against a team that ranks No. 20 in the land against the rush. Though QB Cody Fajardo has played well under center since he has come in place of QB Tyler Lantrip, he is still just a freshman and badly needs to be kept out of as much danger as possible. That leaves RB Lampford Mark to get the job done on the ground, and though he is averaging 5.6 yards per carry, he doesn’t have the same type of explosiveness that backs before him at Nevada have had. If the ground game is stuffed, there is no hope for the Wolf Pack to pull off this upset.

Hawaii Bowl Odds at Wager Web Sportsbook
Nevada Wolf Pack +7
Southern Mississippi Golden Eagles -7
Over/Under 62
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Key #2: Southern Miss has to respond well to Fedora’s last game
Often times, teams that are about to lose their head coach go through some severe reactions. In this case, Fedora is going to be on the sidelines before he heads off to Chapel Hill to take the job with the North Carolina Tar Heels, and you can bet that the Eagles are going to want to send him out as a winner. The fact that he was able to take this program to arguably a bad loss against UAB away from being in the BCS is remarkable, as Conference USA teams don’t historically challenge for BCS bowl bids, and emotions have to be kept in check.

Key #3: Chris Ault needs to change things up just a bit
Bowl history for the Wolf Pack hasn’t been all that special. Since 2005, the team has played in a bowl game every year, including twice here in the 50th state. That being said, in spite of the fact that Nevada almost always has an offense that ranks in the Top 25 in America, the results aren’t always great. It barely walked away with a victory over a very suspect Boston College club in the Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl last year, and that was the fourth time in the last five bowl games in which this team has failed to exceed 20 points in its bowl game. Ault has been fantastic for years and years in Reno, but the truth of the matter is that teams that have a hard time trying to figure out how Pistol attack with just a week of preparation in the regular season have historically figured it all out by the time the team’s bowl game has come around. Fedora is a smart cookie defensively, and if he was really able to figure out how to frustrate the passing attack of QB Kevin Kolb and the Houston Cougars, we’re afraid that without some new wrinkles for this game, the Pistol doesn’t stand a chance.

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