UAB Blazers at Illinois Fighting Illini
Thursday, September 3, 2026
9:00 PM ET, Gies Memorial Stadium
The season opener in Champaign has Illinois laying 28.5 points with a total of 56.5. That’s a big spread and a fairly aggressive total for a game where the home team is starting a brand-new quarterback behind a rebuilt offensive line. The value here is on the total.
Katin Houser makes his first start as an Illini. He’s a fifth-year senior transfer from East Carolina with 26 career starts between there and Michigan State, so he’s not raw. But he’s operating a new playbook, with three new offensive line starters in front of him, and offensive coordinator Barry Lunney Jr. has already told the media exactly how they’re going to approach this game.
Lunney’s quote: “I just want him to be the quarterback. Just focus on the fundamentals.”
That’s not the language of an offensive coordinator planning to score 40 points and push tempo. That’s a coordinator planning to run the ball, hit high-percentage throws, and get his new quarterback into a rhythm without exposing him to unnecessary risk. Bielema has always been a coach who wants to grind out wins with the run game — that’s how his Wisconsin teams operated for years and it’s how his Illinois teams have won 9+ games in each of the last two seasons.
Illinois also has Duke coming up in Week 2. That’s a legitimate ACC opponent, and Bielema isn’t going to want to leave his starters on the field in the fourth quarter of a Week 1 blowout. If Illinois is up 24 or 28 points by the third quarter, Houser is coming out and the second-string offense takes over. Second-string offenses in preseason blowouts don’t put up big numbers.
Now on UAB’s side.
Trent Dilfer got fired six games into the 2025 season. Alex Mortensen took over as interim and now has the full job. He was Dilfer’s offensive coordinator for three years, so he knows the system. UAB brought in 41 players from the transfer portal this offseason. That’s a lot of new faces on a roster that finished 4-8 last year, but many of those transfers came in specifically to fix a defense that gave up 37.9 points per game — one of the worst marks in FBS.
If the defense is even modestly improved, UAB can hold this to around 35 or so, which would still fall well under the total when combined with a slow Illinois offense in Week 1.
The blowout math doesn’t get to 56.5 easily. Illinois wins 38-13, that’s 51. Illinois wins 42-14, that’s 56. Illinois wins 45-10, that’s 55. All Under. For the Over to hit, we’d need something like 45-14 or 49-10, and that requires Illinois to score at a pace they haven’t averaged in two full seasons under Bielema.
I looked at the spread. 28.5 is a big number to lay in a game where the Illinois offense is running vanilla playcalling and pulling starters in the second half. UAB getting nearly four touchdowns has real value if you want the side. But the total is where I’m most comfortable.
The Pick: UAB/Illinois Under 56.5
