College Basketball Picks and March Madness Best Bets

Looking at the Ohio State Buckeyes’ final stretch of Big Ten play, that bad loss to the Iowa Hawkeyes looks like an aberration. Ohio State finished the final month of conference play 6-4 SU (7-3 ATS) with the other defeats coming against Michigan, Virginia and at Michigan State. In fact, OSU posted the fifth highest net rating in the conference during that span. Iowa, which backed into the postseason on a 2-6 SU slide (3-5 ATS), needed an insane 31-4 run for that win over the Buckeyes. An exhausted Hawkeyes squad will get the Ohio State’s best in this Big Ten rematch.

NC State's whole offense is built on two things: Transition scores and big cutting actions from the high post. Guess what Virginia does better than almost anyone in the country? Defend exactly those two actions. That was on display in the 29-point thumping in the first meeting.

St. John’s dominated the Big East, winning 16 of its last 17 games — and going 11-6 ATS in that span — to wrap up the regular season crown. 

Playing in the confines of their home arena, the Johnnies still have a job to do in the tournament. Rick Pitino won’t have his squad overlook Providence, which went 1-1 against them in the regular season and caused a full-on melee less than a month ago. 

Pitino has a storied career in March and is 6-1 ATS in postseason games during his stint with the Red Storm.

Iowa State rolled to a 91-42 victory yesterday and will be locked in for a revenge game. The Red Raiders were the only team to beat the Cyclones at home this year, upsetting them 82-73 two weeks ago. The Raiders went 14-29 from deep in that contest and have been extremely perimeter oriented since All-American forward JT Toppin tore his ACL. With ISU third in conference play in 3-point defense (32.8%) expect major regression in that area. Texas Tech has also struggled with turnovers and defensive rebounding lately, leading to -11.5 extra scoring chances per game over their last four contests. That's bad news with the Cyclones fourth in the country with +7.2 extra scoring chances per game.

Expect the Missouri Tigers to slow down this game and to decisively cut into clean looks inside the arc, two aspects that work directly against Otega Oweh’s scoring.

If all you did was bet Seton Hall against the spread when the Pirates play away from home, you’d have had one darn fine season betting college basketball. 

Shaheen Halloway’s squad is 12-2 ATS in its 14 games played away from Newark, and it's therefore no surprise that they check in at 15th in Haslametrics’ Away From Home rating. Creighton, meanwhile, limped to a 2-13 ATS finish in its last 15.

Seton Hall’s defense (13th in adjusted efficiency) is elite, and the offense prefers to get to the cup, which is doable against a Creighton defense ranking 317th in shooting proximity against.