North Carolina vs Duke -9 O/U 165
It’s finally here! UNC vs Duke baby (as Dicki V would say)! If you are a true college basketball fan you are watching this amazing game tonight! Now one can easily look at this line and make an argument that the Tar Heels are being disrespected here. Rivalries are not supposed to have almost double digit spreads like this so everyone’s first inclination is to bet the dog. It is true that in many years past that these games have been very close and since 1950, North Carolina has scored 13,581 points to Duke’s 13,559. Only a 22 point difference there! I am actually going to pump the breaks on this way of thinking here. When you are looking at rivalries it is also very important to look at what these teams are today. After all, isn’t the New England Patriots rivals with the New York Jets? How has that match-up been working out lately? When you look at these 2 teams you have Duke who is better in nearly every offensive and defensive category to North Carolina’s numbers. The only place that the Tar Heels have an advantage is in 3 point land where they rank 19th in the country at 38.6% while duke ranks 305th in the country at 31.3%. We can look at this 2 different ways. You can say, “If North Carolina can come in to Cameron Indoor Arena and rain 3s on Duke, they can easily win this game” Duke doesn’t really defend the 3 that well either ranking only 138th in the nation. The other way that you can look at this is to say, “even though Duke is terrible at 3s, their offense still ranks 2nd in the nation and because this is a home game for them, they may be able to hit some 3s and blow this team out like they have in the recent past vs Virginia!” The issues that lie with North Carolina is that they do not seem to get to the free throw line enough and they tend to turn the ball over which doesn’t bode well against a Duke defense who is number 1 in the nation in steals. Now North Carolina has certainly improved their game from that bad start to the season when they lost to Michigan and they now are probably the third best team in this conference slightly behind Virginia. I ran the numbers through my algorithm 2 different ways. Using numbers from the full year, I have Duke winning this game 94-83 or an 11 point spread. Running conference only numbers I have Duke winning this game 87 – 81 meaning a 6 point spread. Running just pure home/road splits you get 80.3 to 74.2. If you blend this all together you get a spread of Duke winning by about 7.5 points. I personally have this game Duke winning 90.5 -82.5. Not a ton of value for me at +or-9 but I do slighly think that this game goes over the total of 165 due to the fact that these are the best offenses and fastest playing teams in the nation. As long as UNC can hang most of this game you will see a ton of dribble drives through the lane and many whistles from the zebras. My buy price for Duke is at -7 and my buy price for UNC is at +11. Let’s face it, If you are a sports better watching this game tonight then I do not think that this is one of your premium locks of the week being that this line is so sharp. At the same time, it may be a better option to live bet this by getting from a good idea of the pace of this game right from the get go.
Duke over 78 1st half and over 165 full game. Both small plays and it may be better to look at the pace and bet this one live.
