Georgia vs. Kentucky score prediction by expert college football model

What the analytics predict for Georgia vs. Kentucky in this Week 3 college football game.

Georgia Bulldogs vs. Kentucky Wildcats Prediction / Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

SEC rivals square off this weekend, one looking to maintain its position as the No. 1 ranked team in the country, and another hoping to recover from an ugly loss and make a statement as Georgia visits Kentucky in college football's Week 3 action on Saturday.

Georgia leads the series against Kentucky, 63-12-2, and enters this weekend looking to tie South Carolina on top of the early SEC football standings with what would be a 15th-straight win against the Wildcats in a matchup that dates back to 1939.

Kentucky is a heavy underdog in this game, hoping to avoid an 0-2 start in the SEC, coming off a worrying 31-6 result against the Gamecocks in which quarterback Brock Vandagriff, a transfer from Georgia this year, completed just 3 of 10 passes for 30 yards.

Bulldogs quarterback Carson Beck is 15-1 as the starter and threw a career-high five touchdown passes last week, hitting 72 percent of his throws this year with seven TD passes already.

What do the analytics say about the matchup? Let's turn to the SP+ prediction model to get a preview of how Georgia and Kentucky compare in this Week 3 college football game.

Georgia vs. Kentucky score prediction

As expected, the simulations favor the Bulldogs to take down the Wildcats on the road this week.

SP+ predicts that Georgia will defeat Kentucky by a projected score of 38 to 16 and to win the game by an expected 22.5 points.

The model gives the Bulldogs a 92 percent chance of outright victory over the Wildcats.

SP+ is a “tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency” that attempts to predict game outcomes by measuring “the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football.”

How good is it this season? So far, the SP+ model is 47-44 against the spread with a 51.6 win percentage.

Point spread

Georgia is a 24.5 point favorite against Kentucky, according to the lines at FanDuel Sportsbook, which set the total at 45.5 points for the game.

FanDuel lists the moneyline odds for Georgia at -4000 to win outright and for Kentucky at +1400.

If you're using this projection to bet on the game, you should take...

• Kentucky +24.5
• Georgia to win -4000
• Bet over 45.5 points

Computer prediction

Other analytical models also suggest the Bulldogs will win the game easily.

That includes the College Football Power Index, a computer prediction model that uses data points from both teams to simulate games 20,000 times to pick winners.

Georgia is projected to win the game in the overwhelming 92.4 percent of the computer's updated simulations, while Kentucky comes out the expected winner in the remaining 7.6 percent of sims.

The index predicts that Georgia will be 23.1 points better than Kentucky on the same field in both teams' current composition, not enough to cover the spread.

Georgia is expected to win 10 games this season and places second among SEC teams with an 83.6 percent chance to qualify for the College Football Playoff, according to the updated models.

Kentucky is last in the SEC with a 0.3 percent shot at the 12-team playoff and will win 4.7 games this season, according to the index.

Georgia vs. Kentucky game time

When: Sat., Sept. 14
Time: 7:30 p.m. Eastern
TV: ABC network

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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.

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