Betting Line: Ohio State -31.5 | O/U 48.5
For the first time in the 2025 season, Ohio State failed to cover last weekend against Purdue.
With the Buckeyes around a 29-point favorite against the Boilermakers, a late touchdown by the home team against the OSU
backups cut the deficit to 24 points, and the 34-10 win was not enough to cover the spread. Ohio State is now 7-1-1 against the spread this season, having pushed as 28-point favorites over Ohio in a 37-9 victory in Week 3.
Ryan Day’s group is once again a massive favorite in Week 12, facing their biggest spread against an FBS opponent this year as 31.5-point favorites over UCLA. The Buckeyes will be playing their last home night game of the regular season, and will want to show off a bit at Ohio Stadium against a Bruins team in the midst of a rough campaign.
UCLA began the year with Deshaun Foster at the helm, but after a 0-3 start in 2025 to follow up a 5-7 finish in 2024, the Bruins fired Foster and promoted Tim Skipper as the interim head coach. Skipper was able to instill a little bit of juice in this UCLA team, losing his first game against Northwestern but then rattling off three-straight wins against Penn State, Michigan State and Maryland.
The good times didn’t last very long though, as the Bruins then got crushed in a 56-6 loss at Indiana. This past weekend, UCLA dropped a 28-21 home contest against a Nebraska team without starting quarterback Dylan Raiola to move to 3-6 on the season and 3-3 in the Big Ten.
Tennessee transfer Nico Iamaleava has a bit of a rough go at quarterback, completing less than 64% of his passes for 1,659 yards with 12 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He has however, had a good year running the ball, totaling 474 yards on the ground on 4.9 yards per carry with four scores.
The Buckeyes made life hell for Iamaleava in last year’s College Football Playoff when he was with the Vols, holding him under 50% completion with only 104 yards passing. Ohio State went on to win the game 42-17 on its road to a national title.
Iamaleava is the team’s leading rusher, with Jaivian Thomas and Jalen Berger sitting atop the running back room having combined for 545 yards and three touchdowns on four yards per carry. Sophomore Kwazi Gilmer has paced the receiving core with 395 yards on 33 catches with two touchdowns. UCLA has four different receivers with at least 200 yards this season, including Titus Mokiao-Atimalala, who leads the team with three TDs to go along with 247 yards on 19 receptions.
Defense has been a big issue for the Bruins this season. UCLA has allowed more than 30 points in a game five times this year, and currently ranks 112th in the country in scoring defense, allowing 30.7 points per game. While the run defense has been atrocious (124th in FBS), the passing defense has actually been pretty good, sitting at 27th nationally allowing 185.6 yards per game through the air.
Ohio State is looking to clean up a few key areas before its showdown with Michigan at the end of the season. The Buckeyes will likely try to take advantage of that poor rushing defense as it continues to try and improve its own rushing attack, and they still need to figure out the right side of the offensive line with Tegra Tshabola struggling at right guard and starting right tackle Philip Daniels missing last week with an injury.
Day’s team was also without star receiver Carnell Tate against Purdue, who was held out for precautionary reasons, but the expectation is that he will be back in action this week to help out Julian Sayin, Jeremiah Smith and company.
The Buckeyes have done a good job this season against mobile quarterbacks, but Iamaleava is probably the second-best one they’ve faced this year next to Washington’s Demond Williams Jr. Expect a lot of Arvell Reese and Sonny Styles in this one, as Matt Patricia will look to put the clamps on the dual-threat QB much like Ohio State did when he was wearing orange and white last December.
All lines and odds are presented by FanDuel Sportsbook.
