Florida Atlantic vs San Diego State -3 O/U 131.5
It’s not too often where you will see this matchup in basketball, football or in any college sport! So the whole story this week was the inconsistent foul call at the end of the game to give San Diego State the win vs Creighton. Should we be punishing the Aztecs for that call? Absolutely not. We also do not know if they would have won anyways in overtime. What we do know is that they have an elite defense and get to play a team in FAU that doesn’t have much for NBA talent. In saying that, I do not think that the Aztecs have a lot of NBA talent themselves. San Diego State can play defense, but if this game has some tight calls involved, FAU will be getting to the free throw line. When it comes to effective FG%, the Owls rank 25th in the nation at 54.3% while the Aztecs are only 223rd in the nation at 49.6%. I would like to say that they play in a harder conference, but I am not so sure that conference USA is inferior to the Mountain west this year. From a defensive perspective, the Aztecs rank 4th in efficiency while the Owls rank 30th. One would figure that San Diego State will have a huge matchup advantage inside, but guys like Vladislav Goldin at 7’1 tall has seemed to stop taller teams like Tennessee and Memphis from gaining much momentum in second chance points. Looking at the metrics from Haslametrics here, FAU actually has an advantage over San Diego State in second change points as well as fast break points. I also notice that San Diego State really has no advantage over FAU in most major categories in this matchup. I think that this is a close game and the Owls may be flying to the finals after this one.
FAU +3 – 2 stars