College Hoops Betting Notes & Quotes
By Teddy Covers
In this week’s edition of College Hoops Notes & Quotes I’ll look at a trio of under-the-radar teams, well outside the national spotlight. All three squads are in the process of morphing from underachievers into overachievers against the spread. Will the current trends continue? Read on to find out.
Hilltopper turnaround
As recently as two weeks ago, Western Kentucky was a legitimate pointspread disaster area. Following a wire-to-wire home loss against Florida Atlantic, the preseason Sun Belt favorites were sitting at 5-11 SU, 3-12 ATS.
Well, the betting markets finally stopped supporting the Hilltoppers just at the point where their talent level and newfound teamwork finally got them over the hump and into positive-momentum territory. Western Kentucky has won back-to-back games for the first time in six weeks.
“We’re starting to carry over the things we do in practice. It was a lot of fun to watch them play on both ends, honestly. And put together pretty close to a 40-minute effort,” said head coach Ken McDonald following their blowout win over Troy, the second straight game in which Western Kentucky led by 20-plus on their way to an easy victory.
“Everybody just finally decided that ‘hey, if we’re not a team, we’re going to lose and if we are a team, we’ll win.’ Everybody just said ‘we’re all in together.’ Now it’s one for all and all for one,” senior forward Sergio Kerusch told reporters.
It doesn’t take much to turn a season-long underachiever into a pointspread machine. In this instance with Western Kentucky, it looks as if two simple wins have gotten them back on track, pointing the way towards continued pointspread success in the coming weeks.
Wolf Pack bites
Nevada spent the first two months of the season finding ways to lose tight games. The rebuilding Wolf Pack were not short on talent. Their starting five can hang tough with anyone in the WAC but they lacked experience after graduating two seniors and losing underclassmen Luke Babbitt and Armon Johnson to the NBA Draft. The Wolf Pack played a brutal non-conference slate and went 0-7 in their first seven games decided by six points or less.
But things have started to turn for the better for David Carter’s team in the past few weeks. They enjoyed a nice blowout win over Hawaii in their WAC opener at the Lawlor Events Center in Reno. And, after a trio of tough losses on the road at Fresno and Idaho and at home against WAC heavyweight Utah State, Nevada finally notched a tight victory in a hostile environment with a two-point road win at Boise State.
Since that road win, we’ve seen a pair of solid Nevada wins at home, giving this talented WAC heavyweight its first three-game winning streak of the season. Nevada has held its opponents to 37-percent shooting from the floor during this winning streak and has set season highs for steals in each of the last two games.
“I’ve got the offense down now and I don’t feel like a freshman at all actually. It’s basketball and I’m trying to be a leader. That’s what I came here for,” said true-frosh point guard Deonte Burton, who has begun to develop after some significant early season growing pains.
Head coach Carter agreed with his young point guard.
“He really had nobody to watch, especially on the perimeter because all of the perimeter guys are new. I think he’s adapted very well. He has a lot of confidence in himself and we have a lot of confidence in him,” Carter told the media.
Red Raider haters
Texas Tech isn’t exactly a college basketball powerhouse. Its 19-win NIT season a year ago was considered a successful campaign for a mediocre program and bigger things were expected from a senior-laden squad that returned four starters this year.
But Red Raider supporters got crushed repeatedly for the first two months of the season. Heading into last weekend’s game against Nebraska, Texas Tech was sitting with an 8-11 SU record and woeful 2-12 mark against the spread, including a goose egg against the spread on the highway.
“Maybe it's my fault just because I have been around such good seniors my whole life,” head coach Pat Knight said, calling out his six seniors last week. “I got spoiled being at Indiana. I didn't see this problem coming from the seniors. I just thought the way things have been transgressing the last two years, getting better each year it's just a given these guys were going to show up and play.”
It might have taken two months for his team to heed his words, but the Red Raiders are suddenly on a real uptick, coming off back-to-back upset wins. They beat Nebraska as home dogs last weekend and followed that with their first road win (and first road cover) of the season, beating a feisty Iowa State squad with three different seniors notching double-doubles.
“They’ve played 80 minutes. If there was wood, I’d knock on it. I’m hoping they don’t get really high on themselves, but I’ll let them enjoy it until tomorrow,” Knight said following the wins.
“We’ve got so many guys who can score the ball, shoot the ball, can make plays that whenever we share the ball like that we’re hard to beat,” said senior forward Mike Singletary. “It’s taken us a little bit to figure that out, but I think now that we’ve got it going we’re going to have a little turnaround…..You need one (game) to get on a roll. We got the first (two) out of the way, and now we’ve got a few games here that we feel like we can win.”
Texas Tech has a chance to keep its winning streak going with a game against slumping Oklahoma State in Lubbock this weekend. The Cowboys have lost four of their last five overall and have lost three of their past four road games by 20-plus-point blowout margins.