College Basketball Bets
We have a much smaller college basketball slate today, as there are only 20 D-I vs. D-I matchups to survey. Sixteen more D-I teams will play against lower-division opponents, who can be rather feisty sometimes, as evidenced by Hawaii-Pacific’s win over Boise State last night. Each day of the season will help us learn more about these teams as they all try to figure out how to play with each other.
We’ve got some enormous spreads tonight, as a lot of major-conference teams play lesser opponents. Outside of the Texas vs. Duke game, much of tonight’s action won’t get too much attention from casual observers, but we’ve seen some large overnight line movement. The IU Indy/Ohio State total moved upwards of 12.5 points on Monday. You’ll get that early in the season in this inefficient market.
For more college basketball best bets today, check out Greg Peterson’s daily article.
As always, I want to give a shout-out to Bart Torvik (BartTorvik.com), Erik Haslam (Haslametrics.com), and KenPom, as they provide a lot of great data. This season, we’ve also connected with CBBAnalytics.com to access their data and I’ll be working that into my Monday-Saturday article. Use promo code VSIN for $30 off at CBB Analytics and find your betting edge.
This article will run Monday-Saturday. Lines will be from DraftKings, as they are widely available to readers. Shop around for the best prices.
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 (DraftKings) and Circa CBB Betting Splits a look for these or any other college basketball games today have your interest.
Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publish.
Nicholls Colonels vs. Kentucky Wildcats (-30.5, 153.5)
7 p.m. ET
With a couple games to get in the swing of things before playing in-state rival Louisville, I fully expect Kentucky to come out and flex their talent and muscle in this game against overmatched Nicholls. Head coach Tevon Saddler is doing a great job with the Colonels and they should be a contender in the Southland Conference, but it’s going to take some time for them to come together.
The top returnees for Nicholls this season are Trae English, Sincere Malone, Jaylen Searles, and Emarion Ellis. Obviously year-over-year improvement is possible, but English shot 39/31/77 (2P%/3P%/FT%), Malone was 47/31/77, Searles was 31/36/57, and Ellis was 47/29/46. Those are some really bad shooting numbers across the board. JUCO transfers Domanic Betancourt and Zaiden Cross will be relied on for scoring right away, but the gap between the NJCAA and playing Kentucky is unfathomably massive.
Perhaps Mark Pope slows his team down to avoid embarrassing Nicholls, but I don’t think he’ll want to. In Kentucky’s first seven games last season, they played to 74, 79, 75, 71, 82, 78, and 79 possessions. They’ll run and they have better depth and a roster that fits more of what Pope wants to do. They’re also going to be able to bring some immense size off the bench that Nicholls will have no answer for when this one does get out of control.
We know that Otega Oweh will get his and so will Jaland Lowe, but other transfers like Reece Potter and Mouhamed Dioubate should get some run here. Per CBB Analytics, Dioubate was in the 86th percentile in PTS/40, 99th percentile in REB/40, 87th percentile in AST/40, and 98th percentile in STL/40. He just couldn’t get on the floor enough at Alabama, as he only played 16 minutes per game. Similarly, Miami (OH) C Reece Potter only played 17.1 minutes per game. As a guy who can come off the bench in spurts to play in this up-tempo offense, he should find success against these lesser teams, plus he was a 38.6% 3-point shooter.
Then, of course, there are star freshmen like Malachi Moreno, a 7-footer who can get his feet wet in these low-pressure situations before needing him to take on more of a role down the line. Same thing with fellow freshmen Jasper Johnson and Andrej Jelavic. Pope has no incentive to take his foot off of the gas here and Nicholls returns a lot of inefficient offensive players.
Pick: Kentucky -30.5 (-110)
Georgia Southern Eagles at East Carolina Pirates (-5.5, 149.5)
7 p.m. ET
Most Sun Belt teams opened up their seasons against MAC opponents last night and it was a mixed bag of results, including some extremely high-scoring games. This total has been bet up a little bit from where it opened at 146.5 (Fanduel), but I think that’s the wrong way to go in this game.
Let’s start with Georgia Southern, who has to replace leading scorer Adante’ Holiman (39% 3P%) and Bradley Douglas. Nakavieon White had 10.3 PPG and is the leading returning scorer, but he was just a 41% shooter from the floor and 33.3% from 3. The Eagles love to take 3s, as they had the 65th-highest 3P Rate in the nation last season, but Holiman took 203 of those. Douglas took 171 and shot under 30%, so there is a chance that his replacement is a better shooter. But, 40% 3-point shooter Eren Banks transferred to App State and fellow 40% guy Nate Brafford is at Charleston Southern now.
The Eagles didn’t really have a true point guard last season based on their assist numbers, but Holiman was primarily running the show. For a team that had a 19% TO% last season, almost never got to the free throw line and was 353rd in the nation in FT%, I don’t see this offense improving much at all.
In fact, head coach Charlie Henry spoke a lot with local media about the need to be better on defense and on the defensive glass because that’s what the top teams in the Sun Belt did last season. I think he’s aware of the offensive challenges facing his team, which could lead to a slower tempo and more focus on securing defensive boards, thus slowing down their transition game.
East Carolina shot just 31.2% from 3 last season and opponents fired away at 38.4% from deep. That would be more problematic if I felt like Georgia Southern had better shooters, but obviously better perimeter defense was a huge focus for Mike Schwartz in the portal and in offseason practices. Without leading scorers RJ Felton and CJ Walker, points are likely going to be hard to come by for this team as well.
Jordan Riley had 164 shot attempts on Close Twos and shot nearly 65% on them, but without Felton and Walker, I don’t think his path to the tin will be as open. Like Georgia Southern, the returnees for ECU are pretty inefficient offensive players. It will be up to JUCO transfer Corey Caulker to run this offense and find ways to get guys the ball for open looks. To be honest, I expect that Schwartz slows down the pace this season. The Pirates were 316th in pace two seasons ago and have been a very inefficient shooting offense in all three of his seasons.
But, they did improve by more than 200 spots in Torvik’s 2P% defense numbers year over year. Schwartz also focused on defensive talk with the media, probably a sign of the concerns he has about his offense. This game could be played to a slower pace than expected as both teams try to find shot-makers.
Pick: Under 149.5 (-112)
UNC Greensboro Spartans at Kansas State Wildcats (-16.5, 146.5)
8 p.m. ET
After having one of the most expensive teams in the nation last year, Jerome Tang has once again rebuilt his Kansas State roster. He has scorers all over the floor, as the four main transfers for the team were all double-digit scorers at their previous stops. He also has two new assistant coaches on the roster, including former North Florida head coach Matthew Driscoll, whose team had a 54% 3P Rate last season. Kansas State was 147th in that department last season. North Florida was easily first.
So, this will be a very different looking Wildcats team. And it could work out extremely well. They could shoot the lights out and blow a bunch of teams out in the non-conference. It could also not go very well at all.
PJ Haggerty had a 28.2% Usage Rate last season at Memphis. He was outstanding and one of the nation’s top transfers, as he plays at his fourth school in four years. He had a Usage Rate over 30% at Tulsa in 2023-24. Nate Johnson had a 23% Usage Rate at Akron, but was only a 29% 3-point shooter and is just 31.6% for his collegiate career. Abdi Bashir Jr. had a 31.6% Usage Rate for Monmouth. And while he shot 3s well at 38.3%, he only shot 37% on 2s. Bowling Green transfer Marcus Johnson had a 26.7% Usage Rate.
There is only one basketball to go around. How will these guys come together early in the season? Will they be unselfish? Will Tang be able to keep these guys from forcing bad shots because they want the numbers.
Mike Jones at UNC Greensboro is replacing a lot for the second straight season. This time around, he’s missing his top four players in Kenyon Giles, Ronald Polite III, Donovan Atwell, and Malik Henry. Going into last season, it was the task of replacing Mikael Brown-Jones and Keyshaun and Kobe Langley. The Spartans went 20-11 with the latter trio and 20-12 with the former quartet. So Jones and his staff find good fits and good players.
This is a team that plays at a very slow pace and we’ll see if they’re able to slow Kansas State down tonight. I think that they could. They’re also usually well above the national average defensively and were actually a top-50 defense by eFG% last season.
To me, even with all of their turnover, I see more of a team game from the Spartans, while the Wildcats have a collection of individuals. A very, very talented collection of individuals, but I think they’ll need time to learn how to play together.
Pick: UNC Greensboro +16.5 (-108)
