wednesday ncaa hoops

[loophole]

decent 5-3 night tuesday, but featured play on wyoming flops as cowboys inexplicably lose outright to san diego in laramie. but enough of the past, on to the future:

se mo st+6: billikens shoot a paltry 37.6% from the field, 37.7% at home, and average an anemc 52.8 ppg, which puts them around 321st among the 326 div a teams. they've lost 4 of 5 their games at the once proud savvis center, and tonight may be without the services of sr guard reggie bryant, who has missed the last two practices with an eye infection. nontheless, tonight they lay 6 points to a fundamentally sound se mo team who have stayed within four points in four of six losses. i think not.

hou +3: almost didn't bother to post this game since greg has already put it up in the forum. houston is another well-coached team on the rise coming off an embarrrassing blowout loss at washingon now facing an undefeated a&m team who perfec record is bloated with cupcake wins. nice line value.


back in a bit with more.

 

[loophole]

haw +5: lord help me, but i'm gonna play the warriors on the mainland. most of the fresno team that dominated hawaii last year is gone, and this year's version is going to face some matchup problems against hawaii's size. warrior's domination of the paint has them leading the early season wac stats in scoring defense and offensive rebounds. while fresno's rebounding numbers crunch to a slight edge for the season, those stats are misleadingly padded with big margins against early inferior foes. fact is, bulldogs have a -7 rebounding margin in their last five games and have slumped to three straight losses.

to add to fresno's worries tonight, leading scorer la'vance coleman is fighting a groin injury and first team pg dominique white won't start tonight because of illness, but will be available if somewhat slowed. his replacement, redshirt freshman kevin bell, has seen action in only three games thus far.

what you end up with is a green, struggling fresno team facing a veteran, physically superior hawaii team with double revenge. even with the mainlaid onus staring dead on the warriors, situation favors taking the points imo.


clemson -11-: i'm going to continue my inclination to fade the pirates on the road. even though stats show ecu 3-2 ats away this year, all three covered games were at neutral sites. two came in the pirates fast start in the season-opening holiday tournament in raleigh, the other in a tough but losing effort against south carolina. while ecu showed well in the south carolina loss, that game came on the heels of coach herrion going on tilt with his players following a homecourt blowout loss to winthrop. things have been pretty quiet in greenville over the holidays; i'm hearing nothing to suggest that the pirates are curing their current funk.

if you struggle on the road, littlejohn coliseum is not wher you want to play. to complicate the pirate's challenge, clemson collects 23.2 to/g at home, a whopping 13.7 of them steals. ecu has averaged 16.3 to/g in those three neutral court games; that number should almost certainly worsen tonight. a double-digit tiger win seems like a good bet.

 

[doochuk]

g luck Loop

 

[Master Capper]

GL Loophole!

 

[weedman]

gl loop
love your insights

 

[ScreaminPain]

Line seems to be moving in our favor on the Houston game. Now at +5 at WSEX...

Good Luck on your action tonight

 

[loophole]

thanks guys.



one more and i think i'm done:


birm sou -5: i'll bite on the favorite in this matchup of two teams that were preseason favorites to win their respective conferences. birmingham southern panthers actually won the big south last year in their first year of participation. they have a solid nucleus back from last year's 20-7 team, with 10 lettermen (7 srs) returning and 3 starters, including top scorer jakob sigurdarson, a first team all conference performer. they stand at 5-4, despite playing 6 of their first 9 games on the road. their road record is a respecable 3-3, and includes a victory over marist at their pepsi classic tourney, as well as close losses at umass and ind st.

in contrast, tenn-martin was voted the preseason ovc favorite mainly based on potential, returning almost everyone from last years team that wallowed in mediocrity due to an avalanche of injuries. skyhawks have also played 6 games on the road, but they have lost 5 of 6 true, one was at duke, but the others are fairly comparable to birmingham southern's road slate. martin's three wins are over reinhardt, bethel college and iupu-fw.

in short, birmingham sou shoots fg, treys and ft better, rebounds better and generally has played better than tenn-martin. i think the skyhawks are being given a little bit of false home court consideration because of the game site in chattanooga. but chattanooga is 300 miles from martin while birmingham is half that distance. at this point in the season, i'd call the panthers the more advanced team and lay the small number.

note this game has a 6:00 pm start time.




glta

 

[IE]

just chuggin along nicely

 

[IE]

denver tonight + pts loop?

 

[loophole]

yeah, what's up with that line? massey comparison index has denver #173, col st #164. can't find any reason for the difference, except maybe the fact that denver hasn't won in ft collins since nixon was in office. got to play them unless i can come up with a reason not to. i'll throw some plays up in a few, let me know what you think.

 

[IE]

looking at this list:

Baylor +17.5 -105
Missouri +155
Tulsa -2 -108
Wyoming +13 +101
Denver U +7 +101
Tennessee Chat -8 -122
E. Washington +10 -109