1. Monmouth is a new team. They have all the momentum and are playing their best basketball of the year right now (albeit just two games, it is something because it revolves around Seaborn’s return).
This is the team every Monmouth fan and player thought they’d be, until they lost Micha Seaborn early in the year, by far their best player, and mingled with the bottom feeders.
So you have a completely rejuvenated Hawk squad here and this Stags game is the one to put the exclamation point on the end of what was a lost year heading into the MAAC tournament.
2. They just crushed Rider, the best team in the MAAC. “Lowly” Monmouth, as 2 point dogs, just blew the doors off Rider by 14 going up 17-3 right out of the gate.
King Rice had Monmouth come out with a 2-3 zone that kept Rider off balance all night. It was never a game beyond the first 20 seconds.
And guess who The Hawks will get in the second round if they beat Fairfield and Quinnipiac loses and win their first round game....RIDER, a team shi**ing it’s pants at such a prospect. You don’t think this game is important? Monmouth can jump from an 8 to a respectable 6th seed with a win and some help. BIG GAME here for momentum and seeding.
3. Great line - posting it early gives us the best. +1. We need to lose outright by 2. No dopey airball and spitting out to the 3 point line to sink spreads.
4 Micah - you want to know if he’s back? 30 points on 10-16 shooting against Rider. He is back. This is the spark plug that makes the cog that is the Hawks run.
5. After getting crushed by Canisius, the game before Micha came back, Monmouth has scored 184 points in two games, their two highest regulation scoring totals of the season by far (they needed 4 OT’s vs Penn early in the year just to score 96 in comparison!).
Add to this that no one has dropped more than 91 on Rider like Monmouth just did except for top of the NCAA heap Xavier at 101.
6. This is actually a mini revenge spot for Monmouth as they lost to the Stags by a single point on Feb 5th on a floater with 2.1 left (a game Monmouth led by 8 at the half).
If you can come up with a good reason to bet the Stags (other than the troll forever mantra of “I’ll fade Scal”), good luck to ya. Because I don’t see it! Monmouth will take this home.
Risk $550 to win $500
Monmouth +1 over Stags