College basketball best bets today

Our college basketball week starts with just two games on the main board, but there are 15 games on the “Added Board”, where conferences like the Patriot League, SWAC, MEAC, and Southland reside. But, there are still college basketball best bets to be found for today. They’ll just take a little extra digging.

Now that the NFL season is down to one final game and we’re almost into February, more people are going to be entering the college basketball market that haven’t been paying much attention. Keep an eye out for your friends and colleagues and give them some advice if you’ve been following along. If not, pick a couple conferences, study them hard, become an expert, and bet college hoops that way.

 

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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. Check out the Tracking Sheet for this season’s results and our college basketball home page for more CBB content.

Here is one college basketball best bet for today.

Jackson State Tigers (-4.5, 145) at Florida A&M Rattlers

8 p.m. ET

Former NBA guard Mo Williams takes his Jackson State team on the road to Tallahassee to take on Florida A&M. Stats in these conferences can be extremely misleading because there are enormous strength of schedule differences based on the non-conference opponents, so I like to look at conference-only metrics here.

A few things stand out to me in this one. Florida A&M is 12th in five key defensive categories – adjusted defensive efficiency, eFG%, TO%, 3P%, and 2P%. Despite shooting 40.2% from 3, the Rattlers have still lost five of their six games because of how awful they are defensively. Their only SWAC win came against Mississippi Valley State, who is 0-20 this season.

SWAC opponents are only shooting 27% from 3 against Jackson State. I really do expect FAMU’s 3-point percentage to come down and it sure seems like a matchup with Jackson State is a good time for that to happen. To me, that’s really the only thing keeping the Rattlers from being even worse than they are. Jackson State also runs teams off the 3-point line, holding them to a 3P Rate of 31.3%.

Admittedly, I am concerned that Jordan O’Neal won’t be able to play for Jackson State. I tried and tried and tried to find an injury update this morning and couldn’t find one. He’s the team’s second-leading scorer and top interior presence. He’s shooting 75.6% on Close Twos and has 23 of the team’s 44 dunks. So, hopefully he’s out there. I think Jackson State can win and cover without him, but I’d obviously feel better if he was in there.

If he can’t, I’d expect Jackson State to play at higher tempo and shoot more 3s, as they did against Bethune Cookman. They were 10-of-28 from 3, but struggled defensively. Fortunately, Florida A&M doesn’t go inside much and isn’t a very good rebounding team. I’m hopeful O’Neal can go, but I like Jackson State and Williams to adjust and play well if not.

Pick: Jackson State -4.5

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