College Basketball Best Bets Today:

On a day made for shopping, we’ve got a good selection of college basketball games, as we have 53 contests on the Friday slate. We also have a good split between on-campus affairs and tournament action. Unfortunately, the action did start bright and early again with everybody shaking off that food coma from yesterday, so it does eliminate some potential games for the article.

However, we have more than enough to pick from and will hopefully pick the right ones.

 

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We have a ton of content rolling in here at VSiN on a daily basis, so you may want to bookmark our College Basketball Articles page so you can find this and also Greg Peterson’s top CBB bets of the day.

Tracking sheet is here. 2023-24 for reference is here.

This article will run Monday-Saturday. Lines will be from DraftKings, as they are widely available to readers. Shop around for the best prices.

Shout-outs to Bart Torvik, Erik Haslam, and Ken Pomeroy, as those are my three primary resources for information when handicapping.

Check the latest college basketball odds for legal U.S. sportsbooks across the country and our Vegas odds if you share a state with us here at VSiN. Also, give the college basketball betting splits a look for these or any other college basketball games today have your interest.

Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publish.

Hofstra Pride (-2, 132.5) vs. Rice Owls

7 p.m. ET

We head to Baha Mar for Hofstra vs. Rice in Nassau. The Pride are on the floor for the first time in a week after a couple of humbling experiences against Florida State and Houston. They opened the season with a neutral-site win at Seton Hall and a strong road win at UMass, but it was ugly in those two roadies before a week to reset.

Rice is clearly improved with former SMU head coach Rob Lanier running the ship, but they’ve played a very weak schedule. They, too, have a loss to Florida State, but haven’t played a team in the top 200 otherwise. So, to me, this is a step up in class.

Speedy Claxton at Hofstra has done a great job with transfer players thanks to his offensive sets and I expect he’ll do that as the season goes along. The shooting numbers have been awful against Seton Hall, Florida State, and Houston, but those are all good defensive teams with a lot of length that can force turnovers. Rice is none of those things in my opinion, even though they’ve played good defense so far. I think that’s a byproduct of the schedule.

Rice has a 14.4% TO% on defense, so it really isn’t a goal for them. That should help Hofstra take better care of the ball and I give their offense a sizable edge in the halfcourt.

Also, Rice, primarily against a bad schedule, has 88 Close Two shot attempts and 85 Farther Two shot attempts per Torvik. I’m not a fan of that shot distribution playing their first game at a neutral site in this tournament.

Pick: Hofstra -2

Northern Colorado Bears at Texas Tech Red Raiders (-22.5, 154)

8 p.m. ET

This is a big opportunity for Steve Smiley and Northern Colorado. The Bears don’t face a lot of Top 100 teams. They faced two last season – Colorado and Colorado State. They’ve faced one this season in Washington State, but Colorado, who they took to double overtime, was not one at the time. They are now after beating UConn.

So the Bears are down in Lubbock to take on Texas Tech and I think we could see a bit of a lackluster effort from the Red Raiders, who haven’t played in a week. The two things I really like for Northern Colorado here are that they’ve historically taken and made a lot of 3s in the Smiley era. That matters because getting inside on Texas Tech might be a little tricky.

The second thing is that they take good care of the basketball. Grant McCasland is carrying on the tradition of the Red Raiders forcing a lot of turnovers, but Smiley’s teams are usually guard-oriented with guys that put a premium on protecting the rock.

Texas Tech’s shooting numbers are likely to regress as we go forward, as this is a good offense, but they’re shooting 49% on mid-range jumpers and 40% on 3s. I don’t see a ton of sustainability to that and maybe a week off will lead to a little rust.

I just feel like this is too big of a number with a good offensive program in Northern Colorado and some situational elements for the Red Raiders.

Pick: Northern Colorado +22.5

Butler Bulldogs at Mississippi State Bulldogs (-8, 145.5)

9:30 p.m. ET

The Bulldogs are guaranteed to win in the final game of the night at Mullett Arena in the Arizona Tip-Off. We got lucky with Butler last night, as I’m pretty convinced Northwestern would have won that game in overtime had their two high-percentage looks not rimmed out at the end or regulation. The last shot went all the way around the cylinder before harmlessly falling off the rim.

Butler had 10 more turnovers and got beat on the offensive glass. I think both of those things hurt them here against Mississippi State. Chris Jans has a very good team in Starkville. And he has a team that was able to better distribute the minutes yesterday in the 22-point blowout win over UNLV.

Thad Matta had five players play at least 26 minutes in a high-stress game against Northwestern. Mississippi State’s top players played just 22 minutes each, as he had 11 players with at least 13 minutes.

Butler has a 20.7% TO% on offense and a 12.2% TO% on defense, so they’re likely to lose the turnover battle and possibly in a big way here. Mississippi State is No. 2 in the nation in TO% on offense and 29th on defense. Butler is also living off of a 40.6% 3P% with a 24.4% 3P% against. Negative regression is likely to hit in that area and I could see it happening with a Mississippi State team likely to have numbers in transition.

Butler is only shooting 52.9% on Close Twos following last night’s 7-for-15 showing. They took more mid-range jumpers than Close Twos and it’ll be even tougher to get inside against Mississippi State.

Pick: Mississippi State -8

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