College Basketball Bets
It is actually a busy Monday in the college basketball world, but there are a lot of day games on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In total, we have 39 games and then a couple Division I teams playing against lower-division opponents. Only 15 of those games tip off at 6 p.m. ET or later. But, those will be my focus in hopes of giving the article some additional lead time for readers.
Even though we have a good number of games, the Big East and the A-10 are the highest-profile conferences in action, so it is a night to dig very deep into the research and look at some teams that don’t get a whole lot of betting interest or notoriety.
For more college basketball best bets today, check out Greg Peterson’s daily article and Tyler Shoemaker’s TSI Projections/Best Bets on weekdays.
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 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.
Montana Grizzlies (-4.5, 146.5) at Northern Arizona Lumberjacks
8 p.m. ET
There is a quirk in the Big Sky schedule that causes teams to play three games in six days. Teams will play Thursday, Saturday, and Monday, as the conference plays at least a couple of games on Mondays to kick off the week. Well, Northern Arizona is one of the teams to draw that short straw this week, as they lost on Thursday to Sacramento State by 14 and Portland State by 11 on Saturday.
They are back home in Flagstaff here, so we’ll see if that helps, but leading scorer Zack Davidson (14.4 PPG, 4.8 RPG) is out until mid-February with a foot injury. Second-leading scorer Ryan Abelman missed the last game – he’s the only other Lumberjack in double figures on a nightly basis and he’s the team’s second-leading rebounder. I couldn’t find anything about his status tonight, but this is a team that has to distribute the minutes a lot right now and some of these guys aren’t accustomed to their current workloads for a third game in six days.
Montana should be highly motivated here after dropping their last game to rival Montana State. They’ve actually lost two in a row and have a big weekend on the horizon with Weber State and Idaho State, so Travis DeCuire will be looking to get back on track here. Montana turns the ball over too much. When they possess the ball, they’re 72nd in the nation in 2P% and 80th in 3P%.
NAU is about average in forcing turnovers, but they’re not nearly as good of a shooting team. Montana should also be successful in bumping the tempo of this game up a little bit and DeCuire should push for that with NAU’s potentially tired legs.
Pick: Montana -4.5
Texas Southern Tigers at Jackson State Tigers (-3.5, 153.5)
8 p.m. ET
The Tigers are guaranteed to win on Monday night, but will it be the home team or the road team? We’ve got a lot of Monday SWACtion as usual, as this is one of those conference specialization angles to think about since there’s some repetition with when these teams play.
Both of these teams really leveled up with their non-conference schedules, so virtually all of their numbers look bad. Jackson State currently has the eighth-ranked non-conference schedule per Torvik and Texas Southern has the 43rd. KenPom has Jackson State seventh and Texas Southern 11th, with the big difference between the two being that Texas Southern played two lower-division opponents and Torvik accounts for that.
Even though both teams are into conference play now, Texas Southern is still having some problems scoring. They’ve scored .928, .960, .953, 1.233, and 1.111 points per possession. The last two games have been better, but those were against Mississippi Valley State, whose only win this season is against a University for Women (and they still gave up 61 points), and Alcorn State, who has a first-year head coach.
Jackson State has been scoring pretty consistently in SWAC play with 1.269, .992, 1.116, and 1.107 PPP in their four games while going 3-1. They are going to take a much higher volume of 3s in this game than Texas Southern and actually playing at home might help Jackson State convert more of those shots. They’re only shooting 31.4% from 3 on the season, but also have only played three of their 17 games at home, going 29-of-82 (35.4%) from 3.
I’ll buy in with the offensive uptick for Jackson State here.
Pick: Jackson State -3.5
