St. Mary’s was a big win. Gives us house money at the start of the day. Murray looks good. Ohio look bad. Still a long way to go in those contests. Here are my picks in the third window:
Northern Iowa +12 (-120) Northern Iowa/Kansas Under 128 (-120), Half Unit…….We’re going to find out in a pretty hard core way how an elite defense from a mid-major level will fair against an elite offense, not only from a power league, but also at the top of the national polls. It’s the fifth ranked scoring offense of Kansas vs the second ranked scoring defense of Northern Iowa. It’s Kansas’ top ranked efficiency offense in the KenPom ratings going up against Northern’s 18th ranked efficiency D. It’s also a battle of pace. Kansas will want it to be aggressive. Northern will bleed the clock on offense and work hard to force you to use every second on offense. Northern Iowa games play out a pace of less than 60 possessions a game. Jawhawk games are much faster with 10 more possessions on average. The thing is, Kansas can D it up as well. In many instances KU’s D stats are better than Northern’s. Their offensive numbers arent anywhere near the Jayhawks. I dont know if you cant count on them for a lot of points. They’re 21-11 ATS, so I’ll take a chance that they have some hot stretches behind the arc, hit all their free throws and hit the defensive glass hard. As for the Under bet, well, consider it a hedge on the Panthers literally not being able to score on the Hawks. They could lose this 74-58 and it would sound about rights. Also, the Under is a combined 21-39 in their games this season. Both went Over on Thursday, so we’re playing the percentages here. First total play of the tournament. What could go wrong?
Old Dominion +5 over Baylor, 1 Unit….the Bears have look great in two outings against Texas this month. Otherwise they’re 3-7 ATS in other games since the start of February. I dont need any reason to take a Colonial team catching points in out of conference games. This is another battle of pace as ODU will want something slower, more deliberate to take advantage of their slew of frontcourt players in the half court. Baylor will want a faster game to take advantage of its quicker guards. Between Gerald Lee, Frank Hazell and Epke Udoh, we have three of the best forwards in the country. You cant convince me that the Monarchs are outclassed in this one. This reminds me a lot like the VCU/Pitt second round game three years ago. VCU almost one. ODU has a great player in Lee that it can milk, the way VCU had Maynor. I think ODU makes a serious run at this game outright, so I’ll take the 5 point head start.
New Mexico +3 over Washington, 1 Unit….i think people are overreacting to what they saw in Round One. If the Huskies can take down Marquette from the Big Bad Big East, certainly they can take a team from the MWC. I dont know about that. This team hung 88 points on Cal, the only Pac 10 team they played this year. The Lobos can play. They’ve been in the top-20 virtually all season. They have 30 wins. They are the third seed. I dont think they should be catching points. They should be favored by a possession, not the other way around. The Huskies defense lets them down in this game and their runs ends. Both teams bring a lot of offense. Only the Lobos have a defense you can trust. New Mexico will slow the game down, thwart the Huskies tempo, drill treys and advance into the Sweet 16.
