Championship Week moves forward on Friday with several high level matchups spanning the country.
While some teams are battling for conference supremacy, there’s also NCAA Tournament seeding on the line for several teams looking to move up the seed line ahead of Sunday’s bracket reveal. Teams such as Indiana and Creighton are looking to bolster their standing amongst the national elite while Arizona State would love to knock off Arizona for the second time in two weeks to punch their ticket to the ‘Big Dance.’
Here’s three plays I have for Friday. For more, check out my betstamp @ rw33.
College basketball betting record to date
College basketball best bets for Friday, March 10th
- Indiana -2 vs. Maryland
- Creighton -3.5 vs. Xavier
- Arizona State +7.5 vs. Arizona
Indiana vs. Maryland prediction and pick
Since the start of December, Maryland has beaten one team away from the XFinity Center in College Park, and that’s Minnesota twice.
The Terps are heavily reliant on their home court advantage and I think we see that come to light against the Hoosiers on Friday night. The Hoosiers have a fantastic interior defense, top 15 at defending at the rim and allowing the second lowest effective field goal percentage in Big Ten play.
Maryland is reliant on Jahmir Young getting into the paint and creating for the Terps as the team is outside the top 200 in terms of three-point percentage, but that’s going to be tough to come by against the stout Indiana defense with Trayce Jackson-Davis defending the rim.
Further, the Maryland defense is going to struggle to slow down the downhill attack of Jalen Hood-Schifinio and TJD inside. The Hoosiers have the lowest three-point rate in the conference, and Maryland is bottom half of the league in two-point percentage allowed. With the emergence of JHS, the Terps are going to be scrambling down low.
In the first meeting, The Terps went to the line 29 times and limited the freshman guard to 1-for-12 from the field. However, Hood-Schiffino is up to over 15 points per game since the start of February and I think Indiana gets the better of the home-court needy Terps.
PICK: Indiana -2
Creighton vs. Xavier prediction and pick
These two split the season series, each winning on their home floor, but in different ways. Xavier escaped the first meeting, 90-87, but ran into a buzzsaw in the rematch with Creighton winning 84-67 in a suffocating effort despite 18 points from Zach Freemantle, who made six of his eight shots.
However, Freemantle is out for the year, and we have seen some of the issues come to light for the Musketeers, who are still lacking the defensive prowess to contend for a Big East title, in my opinion. Sean Miller’s group allowed 84 points to DePaul and had to rally in the second half to make the semis and now face a Creighton group that has the best defense in the Big East around big man Ryan Kalkbrenner.
The Bluejays beat Villanova by double digits in a game that was never close and now get a good matchup for a spot in the finals on Saturday night. Creighton funnels teams off the three-point better than any team in the Big East (11th in the country) which is going to cut off Xavier’s potent shot making, which checks in top five in three-point percentage.
With no Freemantle, Xavier lacks the shot creation inside to score on Kalkbrenner. The Bluejays have limited conference foes to 44% two-point percentage, best in the league, which is impactful against a Musketeers offense that generates more than 56% of their points on the interior.
On the other end, Creighton should get clean looks from deep against Xavier’s porous perimeter defense that is allowing opponents to shoot over 36% from deep, 311th in the country.
The loss of Freemantle sticks out in this situation with a team that can match their size down low, and I expect Creighton’s defense to win the battle in close and advance to the Big East title game with ease.
PICK: Creighton -3.5
Arizona State vs. Arizona prediction and pick
Everyone will remember Arizona State’s guard Desmond Cambridge Jr.’s three-quarter court heave that knocked off rival Arizona on the road a few weeks back, thrusting the Sun Devils firmly into the NCAA Tournament conversation, so can they do it again?
I won’t call for the outright upset, but there are some matchup advantages for Bobby Hurley’s team to keep this game competitive once again and cover the spread.
For starters, Arizona loves to generate points inside, best in the country at the cup, but their in-state rival boasts the second best at rim defense in the entire country, per Haslametrics.
If the Sun Devils can limit the damage inside against the likes of Azuolas Tubelis and Oumar Ballo, I like their chances of pressuring the Wildcats ball handlers, including a banged up Kerr Kriisa, who played through a shoulder injury on Thursday night. Arizona is still a below average team at protecting the ball, and ASU is second in PAC-12 play in generating turnovers. The Sun Devils turned the Wildcats over 26 times combined in the two regular season meetings.
The Zona offense has been dominant as per usual, but the team is still poor on defense. Over the last month the team is bottom half of the country in effective field goal percentage allowed and particularly bad at defending the perimeter, 299th in three-point percentage allowed.
I don’t see the Wildcats running away with this one in what should be another competitive matchup on Friday night.
PICK: Arizona State +7.5
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.