9-5 YTD, 0-1 this week, losing Oklahoma / Kansas Under 146.5 last night
Play:
New Mexico / Colorado St Over 135.5
When looking at totals for the MWC, one must remember that there are two very contrasting styles of play in the conference with respect to pace. There are four teams (Wyoming, BYU, New Mexico, and UNLV) that can get up and down the floor with the best of them, all ranking in the top 150 nationally with respect to pace. Then there is San Diego St, TCU, and Air Force all ranking below #273 in terms of pace nationally, which puts them in the bottom 25% in the country.
And this is the key to tonight's game I believe. Colorado St has played 7 teams this year with pace rankings in the top 150 nationally, which equates to 68.0+ possessions per game. In these 10 games, the totals have been 164, 133, 139, 164, 156, 138, 152, 144, 162, 109 -- all but two have gone over tonight's total. And despite the 109 total from their last game, the average total points still for these games is 146.1.
The 109 total was in Colorado State's last game vs UNLV, a 70-39 final. Because of this, I think we get some value in tonight's total. At times, I know Colorado St can struggle to score, but I can't see a repeat performance of 22% (11-50 from the field) like they had on Saturday.
Seeing that Colorado has already given up 91 and 92 vs BYU, 80 and 70 vs UNLV, and 82 in their previous match-up this year to New Mexico, I think it is safe to say that we can expect New Mexico to get close to 80 pts tonight, particularly playing with a chip on their shoulder after Saturday's poor performance vs AFA. Based on that, we would only need 55-60 from CSU at home to get over tonight's total.
As alwasy, BOL to everyone