Friday bumps

1-1, +0.25 units on Thursday, got royally shafted with Indiana St backdoor cover.

Getting this one early for tomorrow as I suspect this gets to 10 or so by gametime:

Harvard -8.5: Harvard is tied for first place in the Ivy with Yale at 6-2, with the teams set to meet Saturday at Harvard. The Crimson will look to mark time by beating last-place Brown who are dead and buried with a 1-7 record. The 2 teams met at Brown 2 weeks ago with Harvard cruising to a 69-59 win. Harvard doesn't necessarily have the deepest of rotations but having watched them win at Yale 2 weeks ago, they play terrific defence and has the best starting five in this league, getting huge production from Hinton, Barbour, Batties, Eisendrath and Pigge. While Harvard hosts Brown, Yale will have a bit of a tougher test against a Dartmouth team today that is in the middle of a huge battle for the last 2 berths to the conference tournament at Princeton's gym. Only worry for the Crimson is they're looking past the Brown matchup to the big showdown with Yale, but even with 75 per cent effort, I think they can cover 8.5 against Brown. Looking ahead to Saturday, Harvard did win that first matchup 67-65 and I do think they can take advantage of a Yale team that is not even close to being as good defensively as they were last year. Of course, Yale is one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country, and if they get hot, they are plenty capable of blowing Harvard or anyone else in this league out of the water. Definitely one I'm looking forward to. But as usual there will be too many other games to watch on Saturday lol. At any rate ... 0.75 units on the Crimson -8.5 over the Brown Bears.

And one more before sleepytime out here on the left coast:

U-Mass Minutemen +13.5: UMass has lost just one game by double-digits all season, and that only by 10, also notable as it was a 69-59 rock fight against Kent State who usually shoots the lights out. UMass came as close to anyone to knocking off Miami-Ohio, dropping an 86-84 thriller in Miami Jan. 27, with their big men like Bettiol and Harkins-Sanford giving the Red Hawks also sorts of problems that night (they also have a terrific 4th year shooting guard in Marcus Banks Jr to balance the attack). I think they can have similar success against the heavily guard-oriented Zips who do much of their damage in transition and with outside shooting. UMass has in fact played a lot of their MAC foes tough on the road, beating Buffalo, losing by 3 at Ohio and a wild 101-100 loss to Bowling Green. They also have some decent non-conf wins over Boston College, Florida St and Harvard. The common denominator is they play all close games and I don't expect that to change tomorrow at Akron. 0.5 units.

gl brother

Gl RM 

I also like Harvard tonight 

GL on the play's rangers  

@rangersmets

 Time and effort to do writeups for the forum is 

@fubah2

 Appreciate that. Sometimes ... like picking Auburn to beat Vandy the other night, it doesn't play out the way you hope or expect. But I hope it helps... 

Good luck rangersmets 

Well ... another disappointing 1-1 split. Harvard up by 11 late, completely goes cold and hangs on to win by 3.

U-Mass covers against Akron, which they always seem to do. Thought they might get the outright win for awhile there. I think they're the kind of team that pulls an upset or 2 in the conference tournament.

On to a big day on Saturday. I already pulled the trigger on an early game, California -3 ... BC's popgun attack took a huge hit with Hand going down in the loss to Stanford, not sure how they keep this close, even at Chestnut Hill, but I hope they don't!