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Arizona vs. Oklahoma Prediction, Pick & Odds: Alamo Bowl 2023

C Jackson Cowart

Last Updated: December 28, 2023 4:30 PM EST • 4 min 13 sec read.

This year's Alamo Bowl between the Arizona Wildcats and Oklahoma Sooners promises a shoot-out on paper, but our Arizona vs. Oklahoma prediction based on the best college football odds sees one of these teams struggling to put up points on Thursday.

After nearly three decades as a founding member of the Big 12, the Oklahoma Sooners (10-2) are heading to the SEC in 2024. They'll play one final game for their current conference in Thursday's Alamo Bowl in nearby San Antonio.

They'll face off against the Arizona Wildcats (9-3), who will take the Sooners' spot in the Big 12 next year after bolting the Pac-12 following Thursday's game. The Wildcats have won six straight ahead of the 2023 Alamo Bowl, and they'll face an Oklahoma squad with fresh faces on offense after a few key opt-outs.

Those early defections have led to the market fading the Sooners, who opened as slim favorites before a shift in Arizona's favor. I'm not so sure that's a move in the right direction given the talent that remains for both sides ahead of Thursday's clash.

As part of our look at all college bowl game odds, here is our best Arizona vs. Oklahoma prediction and our college football picks for Thursday's Alamo Bowl (odds via our best college football betting sites; pick confidence based on a 1-to-5-star scale).

Arizona vs. Oklahoma prediction: Alamo Bowl

Oklahoma +2.5 (+100 via FanDuel) ⭐⭐⭐

This profiles as one of the best matchups of this entire bowl season, and you can make one heck of an argument in either direction on the spread.

The betting market has shown a clear early preference for Arizona, which enters Thursday's game as one of the hottest teams in the country under third-year coach Jedd Fisch - who has engineered one of the best turnarounds in college football two years after a 1-11 season.

After a 3-3 start to 2023, the Wildcats ripped off six straight wins behind backup-turned-starting QB Noah Fifita (2,515 yards, 23 TDs), who finished the year ranked eighth in the NCAA's passing efficiency metric (167.51) and fourth in completion rate (73.6%). His play is a big reason why the market has rallied around Arizona, even as its defense showed some warts against Pac-12 competition.

A look under the hood reveals some concerns with that optimism. While Fifita was uber-efficient and turnover-averse in his eight starts, the redshirt freshman also had the fifth-lowest big-time throw percentage (2.3%) among 92 QBs with at least 300 dropbacks, while his average depth of target (7.6) was eighth-lowest among that group.

That's to say nothing of his receivers, who dropped just six of his passes - also the fewest among those 93 qualified passers.

Fifita will need to show more aggressiveness on Thursday to keep pace with Oklahoma, which featured an even more explosive offense than Arizona did in 2023. The Sooners ranked third in scoring (43.2 PPG) and fifth in yardage (502.4 YPG), which helped this team boast the fifth-highest scoring margin (plus-20.9 PPG) against FBS competition.

Those numbers came mostly under QB Dillon Gabriel - who has since transferred to Oregon - though Oklahoma is in good hands with former five-star prospect Jackson Arnold, a top-10 recruit out of high school who has drawn rave reviews in practice leading up to this game.

He could be without three starting offensive linemen on Thursday, but he'll face a Wildcats defense that ranked 72nd in passing yards allowed (229.6 YPG) and lost a handful of players to the transfer portal, too. New Sooners play-caller Seth Littrell, a former OC with an Air Raid background, should take full advantage of that mismatch on Thursday even with a new QB.

Oklahoma's defense struggled late in the season, but it should be almost fully intact for the Alamo Bowl. I'd expect head coach Brent Venables - one of the best defensive minds in college football - to have a plan to force Fifita out of his comfort zone and into trouble in his first-ever bowl game.

This game opened at Oklahoma -1.5, which feels closer to the right number than what we've seen since the market galvanized around Arizona. Consider, too, that these teams feature team totals within 1-2 points of each other at our best sportsbooks, even as OU is catching 2.5 points across the board.

It feels like the market has overreacted to some key opt-outs for a team that remains the superior side on paper. This is just a three-star play given the uncertainty surrounding Arnold, but it's a bet I'd still make ahead of Thursday's game.

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Arizona vs. Oklahoma best odds

FanDuel (+100)

DraftKingsFanDuelBetMGMCaesarsbet365
Oklahoma +2.5Oklahoma +2.5Oklahoma +2.5Oklahoma +2.5Oklahoma +2.5
-102+100-105-105-110

Oklahoma was dealing at +3 via DraftKings all the way up until around 4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, but the market has since settled at Sooners +2.5 across our best sports betting sites.

That said, the juice isn't the same at every shop. We'd recommend grabbing the even-money price at FanDuel, though it's always worth checking out our best sportsbook promos to see if there's a compelling bonus offer to cash in on for this year's Alamo Bowl.

Editor's note: Get ready for the launch of Vermont sports betting with our best Vermont sportsbook promos, and be sure to download the best Vermont sports betting apps! 21+ and present in VT. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

Arizona vs. Oklahoma odds

Arizona vs. Oklahoma odds analysis

Oklahoma opened as a 1.5-point favorite to win the 2023 Alamo Bowl, which came before starting Gabriel announced his intent to transfer to Oregon. Since then, we've seen a 4-point swing in Arizona's favor - though, as we've mentioned above, that isn't showing enough respect for the highly touted Arnold ahead of his first start.

The total also dropped four points, from 64.5 at open to as low as 60.5 at FanDuel, though the rest of our best sports betting apps are hanging a total of 61. That signals some potential value for Over bettors via FanDuel, which tends to be a market outlier for college football and otherwise.

Alamo Bowl game info

  • When: Thursday, Dec. 28 at 9:15 p.m. ET
  • Where: Alamodome, San Antonio
  • How to watch: ESPN
  • Weather: Indoors

Arizona-Oklahoma prediction made Tuesday at 4:05 p.m. ET.

Check out our best college football betting sites:

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Written By:
C Jackson Cowart
C Jackson Cowart is a publishing editor and lead writer for Sportsbook Review. An award-winning writer, reporter, and editor with a decade of sports media experience, "C-Jax" has worked with ESPN, Forbes, theScore, and various daily newspapers before joining the Sportsbook Review team. He's a proud graduate of the University of North Carolina, where he served as a beat writer for the Tar Heels' championship run through the NCAA men's basketball tournament in 2017. Jackson has spent the last five years covering sports betting as a predictive analyst, features writer, and industry reporter. Since joining the team in 2023, he's played a key role in Sportsbook Review's coverage of the Super Bowl, March Madness, and NBA playoffs while serving as the lead writer for the growing WNBA and NASCAR betting scenes. Though he's cashed some big bets over the years -- including Lamar Jackson to win MVP (twice) -- he's still haunted by enough second-place bet slips to wallpaper his home office. While Jackson is a committed "process over results" bettor with a keen eye for advanced stats and subtle bias in futures markets, he also embraces sports betting as a vehicle for entertainment and personal investment. He's written about everything from hot dogs to groundhogs and still hasn't forgiven his "inside source" for a sabotaged bet on the Gatorade color in Super Bowl LV.