RAS
Alabama Un 139
Millionaires Club
3* LOCK MISSISSIPPI ST
Jim Feist
SEC GOY - Arkansas
Gregg Price
10* Drake - This is our game of the week. We will back Dake here. These guys lost at home to these guys by 14, now they are on the road only getting 1.5? They are pretty evenily matched but we like the revenege factor here. This is normally a team that has a winning record, but now they need to start getting some W's if they want to get back to .500. Drake gets the road win.
5* St. Bony - We are going to take the home dog here. We think Richmond is going to let down after a big road win at R.I. Richmond may be on the verge of 20 wins, but only have 5 road wins and St. Bony is a strong 8-2 and this is a good spot to take them.
5* Old Dom - This is our CAA burial of the day. G.M. pissed all over these guys 6 weeks ago and both are 11-3 in the conference, so why in the world is this number so large?? G.M. is coming off a huge come from behind win over VCU, but today they are going to get pounded.
4* Xavier - The wrong team is favored here. Xavier truely is the better team, as they are stronger in almost every statistical category. But Florida is a public team, so the line will always be inflated. You can watch your cash come in on ESPN so grab the points.
Sal Devito
10* Black Label Private Client Play
I'm playing on the San Diego State Aztecs minus the points over the UNLV Running Rebels. We have an opening line of -3.5. For my personal guarantee I will use San Diego -7 or greater here. In MWC action UNLV comes into todays game boasting a 19-7 Record and 8-1 ATS record their L9. Pretty Impressive so far, however they dropped their last game to New Mexico 66-76 at home on 2/10. SDSU comes in 17-7 on the year with an awesome 11-1 home court SU record and is 4-1 ATS their L5. They won in Blowout fashion in their last game against Wyoming 99-57. Earlier this year UNLV was victorious at home vs SDSU winning 76-66. This game is very important for both teams and San Diego would love nothing more than to knock UNLV down a few notches. SDSU is 1 game behind UNLV and will use this opportunity to even the score AND tie the Rebels in the standings. Aztecs coach Steve Fisher was quoted as saying "We're now 1 game behind so if we win this game, it will put us in a dead heat draw for that next spot, with 2 teams still ahead of us and UNLV is saying we're one game out of first place, so we have to win at San Diego State." San Diego is playing great ball right now and has been looking forward to this game for some time. The Coach has told his players how important this game is and my contacts have told me that this is true. SDSU is 3-0 ATS this February, and 4-0 ATS TY when avenging a road loss. SDSU is also 5-1 TY after scoring 80+ points previously. Look for San Diego to Pay Back the Rebels in a BLOWOUT!
Fairway Jay
20* Mountain West GOY San Diego St
15* Iowa
10* Northeastern
10* Auburn
10* Washington
10* Tulsa
10* Utah St
Nick "BookieKiller" Parsons
Oregon St/Arizona Under 123.5
For a number of different reasons I believe the value in this game is on the "under":
Derek Glasser scored 16 points and Jerren Shipp had 11 as Arizona State defeated Oregon State 56-46 on Thursday night to keep pace in the tightly contested Pac-10 race.
Calvin Haynes scored 15 points on 5-of-22 shooting for Oregon State (10-13, 4-7), which has dropped eight of 10 road games; and I expect another letdown this evening.
Keep in mind as well that Oregon State has seen the total go "under" the posted number in seven of nine games this year as an underdog and in six of eight of its road games.
On the other side of the court: Derrick Williams scored 11 of his 20 points in the first 3 1/2 minutes of the second half and the Arizona Wildcats went on to beat Oregon 70-57 on Thursday night.
The 6-foot-8, 225-pound freshman made eight of his 10 shots, including an array of wide-open dunks as the Wildcats (13-11, 7-5) moved into a tie with Arizona State for second in the scrambled Pac-10, a game behind first-place California.
Bottom line: I expect a tightly contested affair; when taking all of the above into account, the sharp money in this one is indeed on the UNDER!
8* UNDER
Opposite Action Plays
Tulsa -2
Marc Lawrence
Tennessee +9.5
Tennessee will look to make amends for a pair of losses suffered last year knowing they are 9-3 ATS as dogs at Rupp Arena when playing with revenge. The Vols are also a profitable 21-10-1 ATS as a dog with HC Bruce Pearl, including 8-2 ATS when playing the role of avenger. UK’s perfect 14-0 SU home record this season masks a mediocre 6-8 ATS effort (4-5 ATS vs SEC teams). In addition, Kentucky is only 13-25 as double-digit home chalk versus .615 or greater opposition, including 7-18 off back-to-back SU wins. And with the Wildcats a pitiful 1-4 SU and 0-5 ATS after battling Alabama, look for the Volunteers to improve to 6-1 SU and 7-0 ATS as dogs with revenge versus .800 or greater opponents under Pearl here tonight. We recommend a 3-unit play on Tennessee.
Rocketman
Pepperdine +6.5
Santa Clara is 5-11 SU at home, 1-4 last 5 overall and 2-8 in the conference this year. Waves are 11-4 ATS in their last 15 games following a SU loss of more than 20 points. Broncos are 3-7 ATS in their last 10 games vs. a team with a losing SU record. Broncos are 5-15-1 ATS in their last 21 games as a favorite. Broncos are 2-7 ATS in their last 9 home games. Broncos are 3-13-1 ATS in their last 17 games as a favorite of 0.5-6.5. Broncos are 0-5 ATS in their last 5 home games vs. a team with a road winning % of less than .400. Broncos are 0-4 ATS in their last 4 games as a home favorite. Broncos are 0-6 ATS in their last 6 home games vs. a team with a losing road record. Broncos are 0-7-1 ATS in their last 8 games as a home favorite of 0.5-6.5. Waves are 7-3 ATS in the last 10 meetings. Underdog is 4-0 ATS in the last 4 meetings. We'll play Pepperdine for 3 units tonight!
Wayne Root
Billionaire - Va Tech
David Malinsky
4* WASHINGTON over STANFORD
Washington is bigger, more athletic, more talented and deeper than
Stanford, and it showed in that earlier 94-61 home domination. The
Huskies won the battle of the boards by 10, and had 18 more bench
points, and note that that included Andrew Zimmerman and Gabriel
Harris still in uniform for the Cardinal (36 floor minutes). They are
now gone, joining Andrew Owens and Andy Brown and leaving Johnny
Dawkins with a paper-thin rotation. So now that we are deeper into
the season, and this is a second game in three days in which depth
and energy become bigger factors, why are the markets saying that
Stanford can shave 30 points off of that earlier defeat? It is
simple, actually, but also wrong.
Washington is 0-5 on the Pac 10 road this season. You get downgraded
when that is on your resume. But there are a lot of holdovers from a
team that won six games as a conference traveler LY, and in truth the
biggest reason for the 0-5 is that they have opened at the five
toughest venues in the league. Now they step down in class, and it
would not be a surprise to us if Lorenzo Romar?s team won each of
their last four trips. This is a team that has not played their best
basketball yet, and with the Husky starters only logging 126 minutes
on Thursday, they bring a high level of energy here.
It is a much different story for Stanford. The Cardinal starters
played 28 more floor minutes than their Washington counterparts on
Thursday, and they were hard minutes, rallying from 18 down in the
second half to stun Washington State in the late stages. Games like
that are not easy to recover from, and the fact that a team as
mediocre as the Cougars could lead here in Maples by 18 in the second
half speaks volumes. Stanford is far too reliant on Landry Fields and
Jeremy Green, who are scoring 41.1 ppg in Pac 10 play while all
others are contributing just 25.5, and each runs head-to-head into
outstanding defenders at their position tonight, part of why they
could only score a combined 24 points on 8-22 shooting in the first
go-round.
Romar has gone 3-0 SU and ATS against Dawkins, beating the
pointspread by 39 points in the process, and he is going to get more
experience on the court to start the game with JR Matthew
Bryan-Amaning starting up front instead of FR Tyreese Brashers. That
helps to sooth the nerves of playing on the road, and his Huskies
finally get that breakthrough win, in style.
4* VIRGINIA over VIRGINIA TECH
It seems like Tony Bennett has been around for far longer than his
short years as a college basketball head coach, but because he
learned from such a master (his father), we were able to see the
?Tough Out? tools right from the start, and through the years we may
not have had a better Play On coach in the role of a road underdog.
Now we add the element of extreme motivation and focus for tonight,
and we get to take a favorable number in a game that can go to the
final possession.
How do Bennett?s teams hang around so well? By executing the basic
fundamentals of the game at a high level, and his own take this week
exemplifies the concept - ?In order to win, you have to eliminate
losing. And what will get you beaten? Second-chance points, silly
turnovers and giving up transition baskets.? That was in
reference to the earlier 76-71 O.T. home loss to these Hokies, when
Bennett felt that the Cavaliers flat-out gave it away after leading
62-52 with 3:44 remaining in regulation. His words - ?I thought we
played so hard, and we always talk about hard and smart together. We
were pretty solid with our decision making up until that point and
then there were some breakdowns. We could have run some clock. Jeff
(Jones) got a wide open look. He had hit one and it would have been
a time to run some clock. We left a guy unguarded in transition, two
turnovers and the out of bounds plays, fouling Delaney - there were
just some things where I thought our execution and just making some
sound decisions hurt us.?
Now Bennett and his team come in as fresh as can be this late in the
season for the rematch, with Wednesday?s postponement vs. Maryland
bringing some key time off, and also an ability to begin putting this
game plan together earlier than usual. With only two O.T. losses
preventing the Cavaliers from being 8-1 in the A.C.C., and with easy
road wins at North Carolina and N. C. State helping to build
confidence, we can put them right in this one to the final buzzer to
win outright, with the spread offered a solid cushion. With only
seven players in the rotation, and with Malcolm Delaney having to
carry far too much of a load, conference margins are not going to
come easily for the Hokies (half of their A.C.C. victories have come
by four points or less in regulation), and the fact that they are
shooting just 30.0 percent from 3-point range in league play makes it
hard to build a margin against a defense that will force them to take
a lot of their shots from the perimeter. Three of the last five
meetings in this bitter rivalry have gone to O.T., while another was
decided by just three points in regulation, and this is more of the
same.
4* LOUISIANA TECH/HAWAII Under
The first five games between Bob Nash and Kerry Rupp in this series
have produced point counts of 125, 117, 129, 131 and 128, falling a
collective 55.5 points below the projections of the oddsmakers. But
if you think those were stodgy affairs you have not seen anything yet.
Nash has adjusted to having a depleted Hawaii roster by slowing
things down, with the result being six straight Under?s, falling 73.5
points below the projections. That became necessary with the
suspension of Dwain Williams and the loss of Bill Amis, but now they
take a hit that they could not afford to, with Jeremy Lay being lost
for the season. It forced Nash to bring three walk-ons along on this
trip to fill out the roster, and with PG Hiram Thompson, the only
ball-handling option, playing through a bad shoulder (only took one
shot in 28 minutes in that 61-51 loss to Fresno State in the last
outing), Nash knows how he must play this - "Mentally, we got to
think through the game. We can't have any breakage. I mean, we're
very thin in the backcourt, so everybody's got to be alert to help
bring the ball up the floor. We can't turn the ball over and give
them run-outs and all that kind of stuff. Everybody's got to be
alert, can't sit back on our heels and we all got to get back in
transition defense." And to make matters even worse they had to
take a four-hour bus ride to Ruston from Dallas instead of flying
because of those winter storms in the region. With another game on
deck at New Mexico State on Monday night they are not a candidate to
be chasing very hard from behind
Louisiana Tech can shut off the basket here with 6-11 Magnum Rolle
inside (54 blocked shots), but because the Bulldogs are not all that
deep (only six players averaging more than 10 minutes per game this
season), they are not adept at extending their defense to force pace.
That enables Hawaii to slow this down early, and it leads to a game
in which there is not much offensive efficiency or pace, and not much
fear at all of late-game ?scramble? points.
JOHN RYAN
25* Ohio Valley Game of the Year
Tennessee Martin +12
10* NHL Titan DOG
Ottawa Senators +133
RAS
La Tech Un 140
Gonzaga Un 131.5