| Range | W | L | P | +/- (Units) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yesterday | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Last 30 Days | 18 | 12 | 0.00 | +12.06 |
| Season to Date | 30 | 19 | 0.00 | +21.20 |
#535 Marquette +12 over XAVIER
12:00 PM EST. Xavier has been a vivid portrayal of a top-five nationally ranked squad, sporting a marvelous 20-2 record. The Musketeers are also a remarkable 11-1 at home, further bolstering their market appeal. However, when tasked with covering a line of -9 or greater, Xavier has done that just twice in their last six games and both times it occurred against DePaul. Xavier covered as a -17½ home favorite against DePaul on January 12th and as a 10-point road favorite last week in Chicago. DePaul is a two-win Big East cupcake. In its most recent outing, Xavier was a 21½-point favorite at home, to St. John’s and the Musketeers sweated out a seven point win against the Red Brick. Rewind a bit more to late January where the Musketeers were 10-point road favorites traveling to Georgetown and Xavier lost outright 81-72. Four days later, the “X-Men” would get Seton Hall at home as a 9-point favorite and fail to cover again. It’s not easy for these highly ranked teams to cover because they are almost always laying inflated points to unranked opponents, yet the market keeps swallowing the points.
Enter Marquette, a team Xavier dismissed on the Golden Eagles court on January 16, by a margin of eight points. Xavier has had Marquette’s number recently, as they have marked off the last four against the Golden Eagles. Even in spite of Xavier’s recent dominance, the Musketeers have won three of these four victories by no more than eight points. While the Golden Eagles may not have the best track record on the road, they did manage to pull off a stunning upset of Providence in early January and they figure to show up and give it their best here. Marquette shot only 4-for-25 on three-pointers in that aforementioned 8-point home loss to the Musketeers, whose backers got the money as single-digit road faves. Now Xavier is top-10 ranked double-digit home choice and aside from this being an inflated number, there are just too many things that can go wrong for a favorite asked to win by this margin, which includes the back-door cover. We’re absolutely not counting on the back-door cover, we’re merely pointing out that it exists.
#530 TCU +13 over Kansas
12:00 PM EST. For the Horned Frogs, they have become a modern rendition of Charles Dickens’ “Tale of Two Cities”, except we can drop the “Tale of Two Cities” and call it the “Tale of Two Seasons”. On the road, TCU is a frequenter of the “Mollywop”, as they get shellacked left and right by many of the Big 12’s best teams. Most recently, the Frogs had their asses handed to them in Oklahoma by the #2 ranked team in the country, 95-72. However, prior to that game, TCU would post a 75-63 win over visiting Tennessee. Overall the Frogs are 8-5 in Fort Worth, but regardless of whether they win or lose, TCU plays teams tough in their own barn. Nothing further illustrates this than the “Jekyll and Hyde” results the Horned Frogs have crafted against the Texas Longhorns, whom they have squared off once at home and once on the road already this season. On January 9th, playing host to Bevo and company, the Horned Frogs would steal a 58-57 victory in Fort Worth, 17 days later in Austin, the Horns would mop the floor with TCU 71-54. TCU’s worst loss at home on the season came against then #21 Iowa State where the Frogs would lose by 13, but even in this game, TCU had jumped out to a six-point lead early before the game simply got away from them.
Enter Kansas, your quintessential premiere NCAA heavyweight, coming in ranked #6 in the country and currently riding a two-game winning streak. The Jayhawks sport an impressive 18-4 record, which is far more alluring than TCU’s overall mark of 10-12. However, three of Kansas’ four total losses on the year came on the road (Kansas is 2-3 on the road overall). In fact, in their last three road matches, Kansas has lost all of them, traveling to West Virginia, Oklahoma State and Iowa State. Furthermore, Kansas didn’t lose nail-biters, they lost convincingly by an average margin of 14.3 points. The ugliest result of this sample was against perhaps the worst of the trio, Oklahoma State, an unranked .500 team that poached the Jayhawks 86-67 on January 19th. The Rock-Chalks entered as a 9-point favorite against OSU, coming in off a win to this very same TCU basketball team. Let us not also forget that in the most recent meeting between TCU and Kansas, the Jayhawks were a 22½-point favorite and beat the Frogs by just seven, 70-63. Kansas has had some violent hiccups on the road and now the Horned Frogs get another crack at them, this time on their own court with 13 big points working for them.
Both games are 2.12 units to win 2.
Also, I'll have more games posted later in a different thread.
Good luck today!
