College Basketball Best Bets Today:

The third Wednesday of the college basketball season brings us 37 games, headlined by a sort of neutral-site game in Birmingham between Illinois and Alabama. Our earliest start tonight is 6 p.m. ET, but college basketball bettors will have to be on their toes tomorrow, as James Madison and UIC start the day off at 11 a.m. ET. There are a lot of tournaments this weekend that begin on Thursday.

But, for now, our focus is on today and seeking out the top plays on the slate.

 

***Top College Basketball Betting Resources***

*Join thousands of other sports bettors and unlock access to picks, public betting splits data, & the VSiN live video broadcast by upgrading to VSiN Pro. Grab your first month for less than $10.*

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.

South Dakota Coyotes (-1.5, 155) at Western Michigan Broncos

7 p.m. ET

We head to Kalamazoo for Summit League vs. Mid-American Conference action between South Dakota and Western Michigan. The Coyotes are off to a nice start with four wins in five games, though two wins are against lower-division opponents. The loss was to Iowa and South Dakota scored 77 points in that one, so it was still an impressive offensive showing in defeat.

Third-year head coach Eric Peterson hit the portal pretty hard this offseason and picked up some guys who are better at forcing turnovers, snagging Quandre Bullock from Niagara and Chase Forte from Northwestern State. Big man Cameron Fens from UIC should help the Coyotes improve upon their 275th-place 2P% defense from last season.

Last year’s South Dakota squad was 17th in the nation in 3P% and still went just 12-20 because the defense was so bad. They were 357th in adjusted defensive efficiency and 321st in 3P%. A lot of the same scorers are back, including Bruns brothers Paul and Isaac. But, I think the perimeter and interior defense have both improved with some transfer help.

Western Michigan lost some scoring from last season, as 36% 3-point shooter B. Artis White and 7-footer Javonte Brown both left the program. Anthony Crump exhausted his eligibility after leading the team in shot attempts on Close 2s and dunks (20). Leading scorer Seth Hubbard transferred to rival Toledo.

While I feel like Peterson at South Dakota brought in some decent transfers, I can’t say the same for Dwayne Stephens at WMU. Donovan Williams was a 41% 2-point shooter and 25% 3-point shooter at Pacific. Marquese Josephs barely played as a freshman at Grand Canyon. And some of the returnees, like JaVaughn Hannah, were really inefficient shooters, as he shot under 27% from 3.

Gimme the Coyotes tonight.

Pick: South Dakota -1.5

Maine Black Bears at Richmond Spiders (-7.5, 131)

7 p.m. ET

Maine heads down the Atlantic coast to Richmond to take on the Spiders in this non-conference clash with a spread that has grown a point and a half on the home team’s side. The Black Bears had one standout player by Torvik’s PORPATAGU! metric last season and that was Peter Filipovity, who transferred to New Mexico State. He shot 60% on 2s and had 205 or the team’s 671 Close Two shot attempts. Filipovity was the one guy that could really create offensively.

With him gone, Maine has an uphill battle offensively. They’ve had .843, 1.008, and .817 points per possession in their three games against Division I opponents this season, with the good performance coming on the road at Brown in a 69-67 win. Head coach Chris Markwood wasn’t very active in the portal, so a team that was 330th in adjusted offensive efficiency and 334th in 3P% is basically the same unit, minus its best player.

Richmond had multiple heavy losses this offseason. Jordan King, Neal Quinn, Dji Bailey, and Isaiah Bigelow were the team’s four best players. They were all in double figures and combined for 51.9 of the team’s 72.3 points per game and 20.1 of the team’s 32.9 rebounds per game. Chris Mooney is a solid head coach and he used his portal bucks for Jonathan Beagle and Dusan Neskovic, a couple of solid, efficient bigs, but the team hasn’t figured out how to come together quite yet.

They’re shooting 47.6% on 2s, with a 57/48 shot split on Close Twos and Farther Twos as defined by Torvik, and just 23.9% on 3s. In the last two games against Charlotte and Bucknell, the Spiders have scored .748 and .898 points per possession while playing to 64 possessions in regulation against Charlotte and 85 possessions with two overtimes against Bucknell.

In the loss to Marist, Richmond had 31 free throw attempts and 24 points at the stripe out of 72. These two teams are missing key bigs from last season and Maine was 258th in FT Rate on offense while Richmond was 315th. Without their go-to scorers, I expect both teams to play at slower tempos this season and they were already well below the national average anyway.

Pick: Under 131

New Mexico State Aggies at Dayton Flyers (-16, 142)

7 p.m. ET

This is an odd scheduling situation for New Mexico State, as Jason Hooten’s Aggies take the long trip from Las Cruces to Dayton, just to return to the desert and play UNLV in Las Vegas on Saturday. But, it is a big opportunity for NMSU against a quality program. Dayton, meanwhile, has North Carolina on deck in a neutral setting in Maui on Monday, as the Maui Invitational gets underway.

So, I’m not sure we’ll get a full effort from the Flyers here. The market believes that we will. But, the market was against New Mexico State in the game against Texas A&M Corpus Christi last time out. They were correct, as NMSU won, but the underdog Islanders got the cash.

I was on New Mexico State against Utah Tech back on November 9 and they won by 12 on the road to cover easily. They haven’t played a ton, but I like Dionne Bostick (Cal State Northridge) and Peter Filipovity (Maine) as transfer pieces. Hooten, who did a solid job at Sam Houston State, really worked the portal hard because this is a program that had its season ended prematurely under Greg Heiar two years ago. 

The Aggies are 157th for Torvik right now. They started 174th. They finished last season 279th after a 13-19 campaign. This is a much improved roster.

Dayton beat a worse Ball State team 77-69. They’re not playing with a ton of tempo and not much urgency. Maybe that changes before they hit the friendly skies for Maui, but I don’t think this is more than a get in, get out with a win, and keep moving forward kind of game. They’re not shooting well from 3 thus far and it’s taken time to get some good looks on 2s – which they have gotten, shooting better than 64% on the inside.

But, I see 16 as simply too big of a number at this point.

Pick: New Mexico State +16

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR