Five College Basketball Teams Throwing In The Towel
By Jason Logan
Covers.com
The toughest part of a coach’s job is keeping his team motivated, even when all hope is lost. That task is even harder when your team consists of 19 and 20-year-old college kids, who have dedicated the last six months to nothing but basketball.
Even the best coaches can have their teams quit on them at this time of year. That presents a unique opportunity for college basketball bettors to confidently go against these programs packing it in with games still remaining on the schedule.
Here’s a look at five times shouting “No Mas” in the final week of the regular season:
Connecticut Huskies (17-12, 9-15-1 ATS)
Smart college basketball bettors could see this train wreck coming from a mile away. The defending national champs lost their barrings when Jim Calhoun got sick, leaving standouts like Jeremy Lamb, Andre Drummond and Shabazz Napier thinking more about their NBA futures than making a run at back-to-back NCAA titles.
Add to that, postseason sanctions for the Huskies for next year’s NCAA, and you have the perfect storm for a 5-11 SU flop that bled bettors dry with a 5-10-1 ATS drought in the final two months of the season. Connecticut, coming off a 72-70 loss to Providence, wraps the schedule against Pitt this weekend and crosses its fingers for an at-large bid to the Big Dance.
Minnesota Golden Gophers (17-13, 13-13-1 ATS)
Tubby Smith blasted his troops earlier this week after the Golden Gophers dropped five straight games heading into Tuesday’s date with Wisconsin. That didn’t work – and rarely does when you have a young team – leading to a 52-45 loss to the Badgers.
Minnesota, which looked like it was on the up at the end of January, is just 1-7 SU in February, lugging a dismal 3-5 ATS mark behind it. The Golden Gophers, who finish the schedule versus Nebraska (the last team they’ve defeated) this weekend, have packed it in and may have signed Tubby’s pink slip in the process.
Texas A&M Aggies (12-11, 13-16 ATS)
The Aggies’ Big 12 swan song has become an ugly duckling, losing four in a row and eight of their last nine outings. Head coach Billy Kennedy has been tinkering with his lineup, trying to snap this skid, and even apologized for his team’s stinky play, claiming that the Aggies are “stealing money from the university” every time they take the court.
Things weren’t all bad for Texas A&M backers this season, earning ATS wins in 10 of their first 13 league games. However, the well has gone dry during this recent four-game slide, going just 1-3 ATS in that span. Texas A&M has one more game left, at Oklahoma this weekend, before what should be a brief cameo in the Big 12 tournament next week.
UCLA Bruins (16-13, 14-14-1 ATS)
You could insert about 80 percent of the Pac-12 into this spot, but things are especially bad at UCLA. Instead of a team quitting on its coach, it seems Ben Howland has quit on his players. A recent report by SI.com says Howland has lost control of his program, with guys fighting, intentionally trying to injure each other in practice, along with rampant drinking and drug use among players.
Howland has let some of best recruiting classes in college hoops spoil while pretty much spitting on everything coach John Wooden stood for during his legendary tenure at UCLA. The Bruins are 4-3 in their last seven games, picking the bones of Pac-12 basement dwellers for those wins, and have gone only 2-4-1 ATS in that stretch. The SI.com report is making its way through the program like snake venom, so don’t expect much from UCLA when it hosts Washington State and Washington in the final two games of the season.
North Carolina State Wolfpack (18-11, 11-14 ATS)
A tough patch of ACC schedule started North Carolina State stumbling, and a 72-69 overtime loss to Clemson was the cold, hard smack in the face as the Wolfpack hit rock bottom Saturday. They’ve lost four straight outings, erasing any chance at a conference crown and maybe even an at-large big for the NCAA Tournament.
Head coach Mark Gottfried has been working with an undersized and undermanned roster all season, going just seven players deep. While his team may still have some fight in their hearts, their legs quit on N.C. State a while ago. This is a tired team with little to no motivation for the final two games of the season, against Miami and Virginia Tech this week.