(photo: Yahoo! Sports)
I will do my best to provide college basketball winners for you on a nightly basis. The majority of the nights we will try to keep it to three plays, but some days may ask for more. I recommend you play them individually .. however, never be scared of a little sniper parlay!
Season Record: 79-60
Season Best Bet Record: 32-16
1/4 Card:
Duke/NC State o144
Drake +1
TCU +6
Illinois -2.5
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Duke/NC State o144 : First Best Bet of the night! I think we see a shootout in Raleigh tonight. 161 points in Durham last season, and 9 out of the last 10 matchups between the two in Raleigh have gone over. The Wolfpack are 29th in the country in points per game at home at 84.4 per. They love to get out and run behind their great home court advantage. Duke will welcome this pace. They will run with anyone that wants to run. I think that NC State’s backcourt can score at will tonight. Duke’s defense drops significantly on the road. They are 98th in the country in road defensive efficiency. At the same time, I think Duke will have a field day in the post. NC State ranks 296th in the country in opponent percentage of points from 2. Filipowski, Mitchell, Young, Whitehead and Lively should eat. Both teams have a BIG path to scoring points tonight. I will trust my gut + analytics on this one.
Score Prediction: Duke 78 – NC State 74
Drake +1 : My number has the wrong team favored tonight. I had this as Drake -2.5. I will have to jump in for the 3.5 points in perceived value. The Salukis are on an L5 to Drake, and lost all three affairs last season. Drake just has their number. A big piece of this is the inability of Southern Illinois to compete on the glass with the Bulldogs. Drake won the offensive glass in all five of those affairs. With Drake having the large majority of their pieces back for this season, I think they will take advantage of little brother tonight to improve on their bleak 2-2 conference record.
Score Prediction: Drake 66 – Southern Illinois 63
TCU +6 : Good news! We still are receiving a discount on the Horn Frogs in the market. I am not sure why. We were all over their win in Utah, and they followed that up with big win over Texas Tech this past weekend. I think Baylor can squeak out a close home win here, but there is so much value on getting 6 in this affair. TCU has a decent chance of winning this game. The Horn Frogs are bringing it on the defensive end this season. They rank 7th in the country in defensive efficiency. Their backcourt pressure is going to really hamper Baylor’s ability to score. The Bears are heavily reliant on guard scoring. I think that TCU has the size to compete on the boards, so I don’t see many cheapies going down for Baylor that the Horn Frogs can’t counteract on the other end. I think this will be an awesome game. I will gladly take the points.
Score Prediction: Baylor 72 – TCU 69
Illinois -2.5 : 2nd Best Bet of the night! We are going to receive some great CLV on this one. The line is already up to -3.5, and I would not be shocked to see a 4 or 4.5 number before tip. This is such a get right spot for the struggling Illini. After an amazing start to their season, Brad Underwood’s group finds themselves at 0-2 to start conference play. They also wedged a blowout loss at the hands of Mizzou in there as well. There have been a lot of reports about frustrations between players and coach, but hopefully the blowout of Bethune-Cookman got a lot of bad energy out of the locker room. Let’s face it. Northwestern is the best possible road opponent for Illinois to be catching tonight. I heard a great tidbit on Northwestern’s start to conference play from Jim Root today. He pointed out that Northwestern is 5-19 ATS in their last 24 games in January. That is a major indictment on Chris Collins’ ability to get his guys going for the conference grind. I think that Dainja, Mayer and Hawkins will eat on the glass tonight and create a ton of second chances for the Illini. It is also huge that they are getting Skyy Clark back into the fold tonight. He is a major sparkplug on both sides of the floor. I also don’t expect a huge homecourt advantage tonight. I would not be shocked to see 50% Illini fans in Welsh-Ryan for the inner-state matchup. The Illini have a huge alumni presence in Chicago. This is set up perfect for Illinois to get back on track. Trusting them to do so in a big way.
Score Prediction: Illinois 72 – Northwestern 63
Best of luck! Let’s snipe this one y’all!!
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