College basketball best bets today

We only have 11 games on the college basketball betting board today, as we’ll have two games in the NCAA Tournament, two in the CIT, and seven in the NIT. We saw a little bit of everything in the NIT yesterday. We saw the good team with the NCAA Tournament snub hangover (Providence), the good team that rallied after a devastating loss (South Florida), we saw the track meet with nobody playing defense (Cornell/Ohio State), and the unmotivated major-conference team (LSU).

Today features two more play-in games and hopefully they’ll be better than last night’s two. Hopefully the college basketball best bets today go better as well after another split last night.

 

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Before I get into handicapping today’s NIT, something I found out this morning about the tournament. The NIT is using a 16-foot-wide lane as opposed to the standard 12-foot lane in college. The 16-foot lane is what the NBA uses. The Over was 5-4 last night and, depending on the book you use, eight of the nine totals went up. Every total but one has been bet up today. Just something to keep in mind.

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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 are two college basketball best bets for today.

Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publish.

VCU Rams at Villanova Wildcats (-7, 132)

9 p.m. ET

First-round NIT action in Pennsylvania features VCU and Villanova. This is not where the Rams want to be. They lost to Duquesne on Sunday to see their NCAA Tournament hopes and dreams dashed. Meanwhile, Villanova lost last Thursday to Marquette and knew that they would be NIT-bound.

I think this is a brutal spot for VCU. They played four games in five days and cut an early 18-point deficit down to 1 in the final minutes of that loss to Duquesne. That was a lot of basketball to play and very emotionally and mentally draining at the end of the season.

While Villanova doesn’t expect to play in the NIT, this is a senior-laden roster that would presumably like the season to go on as long as possible The five most valuable players by Bart Torvik’s Adjusted PORPAGATU! metric (Points Over Replacement Player Per Adjusted Game At That Usage) are all seniors, including Eric Dixon and Justin Moore.

The Wildcats should get some extra possessions tonight since VCU is a little bit careless with the ball and they take great care of it with a top-40 TO%. I also don’t see VCU with their standard defensive effort after all the energy that they spent last week.

Pick: Villanova -7

Colorado Buffaloes (-3, 141.5) vs. Boise State Broncos

9:10 p.m. ET

The final First Four game in Dayton features Colorado and Boise State. I’m going to stick to my handicapping roots here and look at the Buffaloes. They had 190 more makes on Close Twos as defined by Bart Torvik and also had 34 more dunks than Boise State. This didn’t work out yesterday with Howard and Wagner, but those super small conferences can be a bit of a crapshoot. We have two known commodities here with the Pac-12 and Mountain West.

Colorado’s 48.1% shot share on Close Twos was the fourth-highest in the nation and the highest of any power conference team by a pretty big margin (Arizona, 44.3%). Boise State ranked in the bottom 35% in FG% against on Close Twos at 62.7%. I think that’s a huge area where Tad Boyle’s team can exploit a clear weakness for the Broncos. 

Even though Boise State beat New Mexico twice in the regular season, the Lobos were 47-of-75 on Close Twos in the three meetings, including the win in the MWC Tournament. They had the highest shot share in the Mountain West. Utah State was second and they had 1.151 1.207 points per possessions in their wins over the Broncos.

Colorado also boasts a top-10 shooting percentage from 3. They don’t take a lot of them, but it can be a weapon. Meanwhile, Boise State’s offense ranks above average in 2P% and 3P%, but they’re in the 140s on 2s and 130s on 3s. I just don’t think they can keep up with Colorado offensively here. They also go from 38.6% on 3s at home to 31.6% in road/neutral settings, whereas Colorado, who had a big drop as well, still shot 35.8% on 3s in road/neutral games.

Pick: Colorado -3

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