Bryan Leanords Gold Club Selection Write ups
4* College Hoops Gold Club Selection
REASON FOR PICK: 610 San Diego State (-) over New Mexico
One of the largest home/road dichotomies in college basketball is owned by the New Mexico Lobos. They are dominant at home in ?The Pit? but at times putrid on the road. Just using the last week or so as an example New Mexico beat Colorado State at home by 40 before pounding Wyoming by 45. Before that they lost at BYU by 17 and at UNLV by 19 in a game that was never that close. Sure we know that the road games were against the leagues best while the home games were against bottom feeders. But the fact remains that New Mexico lost to the spread by a combined 24 points on the road and won by a combined 55 points at home. On the season the Lobos are 14-1 straight up at home but just 4-5 outright on the road. Two of those road wins came in overtime at Wyoming and UTEP.
The lone home loss this season for New Mexico came at the hands of these Aztecs. San Diego State beat them on the road 72-67 in a game in which they pounded the host on the boards 40-30. New Mexico wins with athletic ability but no team in this league has the athletes the Aztecs do. Even without suspended Kyle Spain San Diego State is deep with all-around quality players. The Aztecs have won the last five meetings in this series including an amazing 3 straight at ?The Pit?. This is a team that matches up incredibly well with New Mexico.
The Aztecs are the one team in this league who can out-athlete the Lobos. That along with New Mexico?s struggles on the road against quality opposition place us firmly on the host at a cheap price.
PLAY SAN DIEGO STATE
Teddy Covers Big Ticket
Teddy Covers Big Ticket
Big Ticket: Game of the Week (last week 2-0)
REASON FOR PICK: Oklahoma State is a disaster area right now, but the betting marketplace has been very slow to catch up to how bad this team really is. The Cowboys reached the Final Four as recently as 2004, but the program has declined precipitously since that time. We?ve seen other programs go through a tremendous revival when the son takes over for the father as head coach, most notably at Washington State last year and at Drake this year. At Oklahoma State, where Sean Sutton took over for his dad at the start of last season, the reverse is true ? this team has gotten worse, much worse.
After a 24 turnover, ten assist performance in their 21 point loss at Kansas State over the weekend, the Cowboys currently sport a woeful 80 assist-to-129-turnover ratio since the start of Big 12 play. Combine that with a #11 ranking among the 12 teams in the conference in rebounding margin and we can expect the Cowboys to continue their free fall. After all, Okie State has exactly one win in their last eight games; that lone win coming by a single point against the worst team in the conference (Colorado).
Baylor is 9-1 ATS in their last ten road games. We?ve seen them hang tough at Big 12 elites Kansas and Texas, while winning outright at Texas A+M, Nebraska and South Carolina. The Bears deep, veteran backcourt is a horrific matchup for the Cowboys bad ball handlers, with Baylor holding foes to an 0.76 assist-to-turnover ratio for the season. The Bears are the better shooting team, the better defensive team, the better rebounding team, the better free throw shooting team, the better three point shooting team ? heck, let?s make this simple. Baylor is the better team. In a pointspread range where a win equals a cover, this game has ?Big Ticket? written all over it. Big Ticket (#585) Take Baylor.
M@linsky 6*
6* Top of the Ticket - Side (5-0 run)
REASON FOR PICK: 6* TENNESSEE over ARKANSAS
Knoxville is absolutely not the place to play this season if your basketball team needs to run and press to be successful. Bruce Pearl?s Volunteers are not just playing uptempo better than anyone in the nation this season, but in some categories they are setting standards we have not seen in a long time. So what does that make this trip for John Pelphrey and Arkansas? Russian roulette. In other words, it is just a matter of time.
Tennessee has reeled off 85, 90, 85 and 104 points in going 4-0 SU and 3-1 ATS at home in SEC play, and for the season the Pearl system has put up some rather frightening numbers. It is one thing to force the opposition into 164 more turnovers than assists, but it is another to be +145 in that category on the other end of the court. Rarely have we ever seen a team that plays at such a frenetic pace take care of the ball so well. So when you can guard all over the court for the full 40 minutes, and also run a smooth attack, it means a lot more opportunities to score than your opponent. For Tennessee it is indeed a lot more ? through 23 games the Vols have 180 more field goal attempts and 69 more free throw attempts than their opponents. That is a most rare level.
Now Pelphrey not only has the coaching disadvantage of going up against this opponent for the first time, which means serious matchup issues, but also the problem of the style of his team playing right into the hands of the superior opponent. But we believe him when he says that he is not going to change his stripes - "I don't want to change our pace. I don't want to play slower, don't want to play cautious, but we've got to be smart. If you don't convert some two-on-ones and three-on-twos and they are able to get stops, it makes for two-on-ones and three-on-twos back the other way where they are outstanding, especially at home."
So what happens at this pace? A team that committed 24 turnovers in an 83-72 home loss to Tennessee LY, and is -29 in assist to turnover ratio this season, is prone to falling into some ugly traps. The schedule has not prepared them well at all for what they are going to face, with an 0-2 ATS tally in their only road dog appearances so far, losing to the spread by 19 in those games. And because of some fatigue issues, the Razorbacks could become even more dry kindling for the Volunteer fire. Key cogs Patrick Beverly (36 minutes) and Sonny Weems (35) have been on the court way too much in SEC play, but Pelphrey?s assessment of those minute counts helps to push this over the top - "It's too high. But there's nothing I can do about it right now. As we evolve as a program, it's going to be about 28 minutes a game. If you are really, really good we'll let you play 30. But the makeup of the team, that's the way it's got to be for now. We don't have great depth there."
Pearl has no such issues. Now that Duke Crews is back to full health he has 10 players in his prime rotation, and only Chris Lofton goes more than 28 minutes. And this is a team more than motivated to deliver a knockout punch, When you have won 28 straight home games, which they have, previous losses on this court linger in the memory. Yes, they whipped Arkansas on the road LY, but that did not erase in their minds what happened here two seasons ago, with a 14-point lead with 8:30 remaining turned into a defeat. First, from senior Jordan Howell -
"But that Arkansas game, man, I remember us leading the whole game, and then at the end we just collapsed. It was so distraught in the locker room. It was like, 'How did we just lose that game?' It was the worst feeling.'' And from JaJuan Smith - "Our seniors and Coach Pearl have a nasty taste in our mouths. We don't want to leave here after our senior year saying there was a team we couldn't beat in our gym. We're going to take a lot of pride in this one.''
The fact that Arkansas will play at the expected suicide pace should lead to a few Tennessee explosions over the course of this evening, and eventually the game breaks wide open, with the passion of the Volunteers and their crowd firmly locking the back door.
(NOTE: This game has drawn a lot of market activity since first being posted, but the 6* Rating carries to Tennessee -10)
6* TENNESSEE over ARKANSAS[/QUOTE]