Top College Basketball Picks Sunday, January 10th (2020)
As exciting as the NFL Wild Card game was between the Buffalo Bills and Indianapolis Colts, the game of the day was likely the thriller in Morgantown between No. 4 Texas and No. 14 West Virginia. While many were calling for Shaka Smart’s job after back-to-back mediocre seasons, the Longhorns are building a resume worthy of a No. 1 seed in March. Today, the Iowa Hawkeyes get a chance to add to their No. 1 seed resume with a tough test from Minnesota, and two other top 25 teams are in action.
Here are three picks for Sunday.
YTD: 51-43-1
All odds via BettingPros consensus
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Providence at Xavier (-3.5): 11:00 AM ET
How often does one get a chance to wager on a basketball game before noon? When these situations present themselves, we have to take advantage.
Xavier has lost two of their last three games after starting the year with eight consecutive wins. They are a team that proved they could finish off tight games, as four of their nine wins have come by three points or less. While that would seem to bode well in this game that is projected to be tight, the Musketeers won three of those games against Bradley, Toledo, and Eastern Kentucky. With all due respect to those programs, they are not as strong as Providence.
Ed Cooley’s Friars teams always get better as the season goes on. They are coming off a tough two-point home loss to Creighton in their last game but have the benefit of eight days off to rest and prepare for this game. Providence is 4-1 ATS in their last five road games against teams with a winning percentage better than .500. Also, the underdog is 5-2 ATS in the last seven meetings between these schools. Look for Xavier’s luck in close games to run out against Providence, at least from an ATS standpoint.
Cincinnati at Wichita State (-2.5): 4:30 PM ET
The Cincinnati Bearcats have had a rough start to the 2020-21 season. Although they are just 3-6 on the year, they just broke a five-game losing streak with a big road win at SMU. With the losing streak over, Cincinnati is a good bet to put their poor play behind them and start a streak of the positive kind.
Cincinnati’s defense should be able to put the clamps on a Shockers offense that ranks outside the top 200 in the country in three-point percentage, two-point percentage, and effective field goal percentage. Wichita State is not a very good rebounding team, as they allow opponents to board 35.8% of their misses.
The underdog is 4-0 ATS in the last four meetings between these schools, and the road team is 7-0 ATS in their last seven games. Besides, Wichita State has not covered any of their three home games thus far, as the pandemic clearly negates their homecourt advantage.
Indiana (-7) at Nebraska: 6:00 PM ET
We go back to the well with a third underdog to end this column, as the Nebraska Cornhuskers catch the Indiana Hoosiers in a prime look-ahead spot. Indiana is coming off a grueling two-overtime loss to Wisconsin three days ago and has games against in-state rival Purdue, Michigan State, and Iowa in their next three games. It is hard to see the Hoosiers getting up for a game against the Big Ten’s worst team.
Nebraska has lost four straight games and none of those losses came by less than seven points. Their four wins have all come against teams that rank outside the top 160 in KenPom’s rankings and have lost all four of their conference games by 17 PPG. All of this leads to Indiana likely being a heavily bet side, which makes us happy to back the contrarian Cornhuskers in a great buy-low spot.
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Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.