Posted at 2:30 PM EST odds are subject to change.

Pinnacle +157 BET365 +150 SportsInteraction +146 888Sport +150

TaxAct Texas Bowl - NRG Stadium, Houston, TX

Streaming: ESPN

Texas Tech +157 over Mississippi

9:00 PM EST. Ever since Ole Miss lost to Alabama and suffered a meaningful and bitter second loss of their campaign, the Rebels have been lost in the abyss. The conversation surrounding the Rebels has gone from, “is Mississippi going to Atlanta to compete for the SEC Championship?” or, if they could finish in the top 10 with a meaningful bowl victory in a “New Year’s Six bowl” game, to whether or not Lane Kiffin was staying in Oxford when the Auburn job came available.

After the Alabama loss, the Rebels would close out the regular season with two more losses. Any semblance of a successful campaign was subsequently put to rest when Ole Miss lost to arch-rival Mississippi State in a nail-biter on Thanksgiving night to close out the regular season. At this point, the real question is whether Ole Miss cares about this game or if they have folded the tents and are getting ready for 2023. We do not recommend getting behind them to find out.

On the flipside, Texas Tech will be playing this contest with some home cooking behind them, in what will undoubtedly be a meaningful contest to the Red Raiders camp. The Red Raiders have done some big things in 2022 despite coming into the Texas Bowl at 7-5. You see, for the first time in history, Texas Tech has defeated both Texas and Oklahoma in the same season. The aforementioned feat was achieved in a thrilling overtime victory in the final week of the regular season when Tech edged out the Sooners 51-48 in overtime in Lubbock. That was a benchmark of success for the Red Raiders program and undoubtedly it spurns extra motivation for them to cap off such a season with a bowl victory against a repudiated opponent.

We had the Red Raiders pegged for the outright win against Oklahoma because motivational intangibles did lie in Tech’s favor and they have been a menace against opponents in their own stead all throughout 2022. We didn’t have to wait long for another opportunity to present itself, as once again we will have a likely more-motivated Texas Tech playing in a de-facto home game even if the Texas Bowl is listed as being played on a “neutral site.” There’s nothing neutral about this site.

At one point this season, Ole Miss was a top-10 ranked team. They also come from the powerful SEC and they also have a more well-known coach compared to Texas Tech (Joey Maguire is the head coach of Texas Tech, by the way). Now add in that The Rebels had a better record than Tech and you have a confluence of factors as to why the market is more enticed into betting the wrong side. We get to take full advantage of a Red Raider team that is far better than their record entails, a team that the market still has not caught up to. Red Raiders outright, it is.