College basketball best bets from Matt Youmans
VSiN betting analyst and host of VSiN Tonight, Matt Youmans, shares his top college basketball picks for today, January 27
Arizona Wildcats (-4, 157) vs. Oregon Ducks
One month into the season, handicappers, oddsmakers and poll voters were raising Arizona, which attained the No. 1 ranking by early December. But coach Tommy Lloyd’s team has fallen on hard times by losing five times, including three setbacks on the Pac-12 road.
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The Wildcats blew a 12-point lead and were stunned at the buzzer Thursday night in an inexcusable 83-80 loss at Oregon State, an 18-point underdog.
Oregon is 6-2 and leads the league by one game over Arizona going into today’s meeting. It’s not an autoplay to bet on the Wildcats to bounce back. This is beginning to resemble the Arizona team of a year ago that proved to be soft and stumbled away from home.
Two transfers — point guard Caleb Love (North Carolina) and forward Keshad Johnson (San Diego State) — carry the Wildcats and make them dangerous. Arizona rates highly (No. 5) on the Kenpom.com metrics and sits inside the nation’s top 15 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Still, something is missing, most notably toughness and scoring depth.
DraftKings opened Arizona -4.5 and early money showed on the underdog. I’ll side with the Ducks, led by guards Jermaine Couisnard and Jackson Shelstad, and take the points.
Pick: (752) Oregon +4
I posted six plays in this column last week and went 2-3-1. There will be some Saturdays when I post as many as 10 plays, but this is not one of those days. Here are two more best bets (with betting rotation numbers in parenthesis):
(660) Florida State +6 over North Carolina
Not many teams are hotter than the Tar Heels, who have won nine straight since a mid-December loss to Kentucky. Senior guard RJ Davis is off a 36-point outburst against Wake Forest. Davis scored 27 in a 78-70 victory over Florida State in early December. This is a tricky spot on the road against the Seminoles, who have six of their past seven to move into second place in the ACC.
(669) Indiana +15 over Illinois
After a loss at Wisconsin, the Hoosiers had a week off to prepare for this game. Malik Reneau, Kel’el Ware, Mackenzie Mgbako and Trey Galloway give Indiana enough scoring punch to stay inside this big number. It’s not a great spot for the Fighting Illini, who took an overtime loss at Northwestern on Wednesday night, when three starters played 40 minutes or more.
