Illinois vs Penn State -7 O/U 141
Well this is the spot that I have been waiting for. What is more important to which team is what you need to ask yourself when looking at this game. Penn State beating Illinois at home by a large margin or Illinois getting their heads out of their asses and get a much needed win being that they have’t won yet this month? I will go with the Illini here. The reason that they have been struggling so much is because their big men like Giorgi Bezhanishvili can’t shoot the ball lately and Cofi Cockburn can’t hold onto the ball and is also missing some easy shots. Well they have to get out of this slump here at some point and there is no better time than now vs Penn State. The Nittany Lions are pretty good at everything that they do but nothing statistically really stands out. They are 19th in offensive efficiency and 20th in defensive efficiency. I think some teams may have overlooked them a bit this year. The Illini is a very good rebounding team despite their big man woes and I expect them to get a few extra possessions this game. Penn State will be a favorite here but shooting only 69.2% from the free throw line tells me that they could miss some stay ahead of the spread shots at the end of this game. I expect a huge effort here from the Illini because of their coach Brad Underwood. Plus point guard Myron Jones is still out for Penn State with an illness. Illinois Ayo Dosunmu is questionable. Too many points here for this situation.
Illinois +7 – 2 star premium shared and sprinkle ML
Creighton vs Marquette -3 O/U 155
Now this total should tell you that this will be one of those high flying games that the fans love in College Basketball. Creighton has been on a tear winning 7 of their last 8 games in the Big easy and they have almost already punched their card into the NCAA tournament with nice non-conference wins vs Texas Tech and Oklahoma but they still have some more to prove now that Seton Hall has 3 conference losses. The smell of blood is in the air. Marquette in my opinion hasn’t punched their ticket yet due to Purdue looking poor down the stretch here. What I do know about these teams is that hey both like to play fast. Marquette hasn’t scored less than 76 points at home since they played Villanova and Creighton doesn’t exactly play slow averaging 16.5 seconds per possession. They also have a pretty weak defense ranking only 82nd in efficiency. Creighton’s offense is very efficient ranking 4th in the nation with Marquette’s ranking 16th led by Markus Howard. I like Marquette here at home under the 3.5 a little bit because this is such a huge getup spot for them and they lost at Creighton way back on January 1st making it somewhat a revenge spot. I really like the over even more under 160 being that Creighton plays faster than their 69.1 possessions per game tells me. Creighton has averaged about 91 points their last 3 games.
Marquette – 1.5 star premium shared play and over 155 – 2.5 star premium shared play
