NCAA Tournament Player Props & Bets: Sweet 16 (Thursday)
Two Sweet 16 games apiece from the West and South Regions take place on Thursday, and the winners will advance to Saturday’s Elite Eight matchups. Among the four matchups are four of the top five offenses in terms of KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency (Purdue, Illinois, Arizona, Arkansas). But that doesn’t mean I like all overs to cash in terms of NCAA Tournament player props.
Here are our three best player prop bets for the Sweet 16 matchups on Thursday.
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- NCAA Tournament March Madness Bracket Optimizer
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Thursday’s Best NCAA Tournament Props
(Odds courtesy of bet365)
Oscar Cluff Over 8.5 Rebounds (-112)
Purdue's Oscar Cluff has a difficult matchup with Texas' Matas Vokietaitis, who is playing as well as any big man in the country right now. While Vokietaitis had a career-high 16-rebound performance in the victory over BYU and has averaged five offensive rebounds through three NCAA Tournament wins, I expect Cluff to match his physicality.
Cluff is the fifth-best offensive rebounder in Division I with a 17.7% offensive rebounding rate. And while he ranks 118th among all players in defensive rebounding rate, he had the 11th-best rate in that metric in Big Ten play.
The Boilermakers are grabbing 74.5% of opponents' misses in wins this season. That defensive rebounding rate plummets to 67.9% in losses. With Purdue being 6.5-point favorites, it bodes well for Cluff's rebounding numbers.
Bennett Stirtz Under 18.5 Points (-110)
Iowa head coach Ben McCollum has done a masterful job of slowing tempo and limiting possessions through two NCAA Tournament wins. The 53 possessions Iowa had versus Clemson was the slowest-paced game in the NCAA Tournament since 2014, while the Hawkeyes just limited Florida to a 61-possession game. Those 61 possessions were the fewest in a Gators game under Todd Golden since his first year on the job.
With possessions at a premium, Iowa leading scorer Bennett Stirtz will have difficulty exceeding his 19.7 points per game average. That is especially true when facing a Cornhuskers defense that forced the Hawkeyes into a 20% and 26% turnover rate in both regular season meetings.
Nebraska also owns the lowest rim rate allowed in the country, which is why it ranked in the sixth percentile and 36th percentile in two-point proximity distance. Nebraska’s hard hedge and constant double-teaming off pick-and-rolls is why I love this wager. The Cornhuskers are in the eighth percentile in pick-and-roll rate allowed and the 99th percentile in efficiency rating when they do, and head coach Fred Hoiberg is too smart to let Stirtz beat him consistently.
Darius Acuff Jr. Under 6.5 Assists (-140)
Arkansas has averaged 95.5 points per game in two NCAA Tournament wins. But while the Razorbacks are padding their stats, starting with 28 combined dunks and layups in a win over Hawaii, they should get nowhere as close to the rim consistently against Arizona.
The Wildcats have allowed 80 or fewer points in 12 consecutive games. The Razorbacks have scored 80 or fewer points in seven games this season, and Darius Acuff Jr. has not topped six assists in any of those games (he is averaging 4.6 assists per game in that span).
Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.