| Range | W | L | P | +/- (Units) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yesterday | 0 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Last 30 Days | 2 | 0 | 0.00 | +4.90 |
| Season to Date | 2 | 0 | 0.00 | +4.90 |
# 581 Albany +15½ -106 over CINCINNATI
7:00 PM EST. Perception is often a driving force behind many markets, perhaps most especially in college basketball where there are 356 teams to choose from. The Cincinnati Bearcats are a household name, regardless of how far they go in the American Athletic Conference or the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. To some, the Bearcats are the perennial eight-seed that sometimes rattle off a few wins before making their usual exit. Last year, the Bearcats were ushered out in the First Round by St. Joe’s in a heartbreaking loss. On a contrasting note, Albany, when they do get in, is seen as the sacrificial lamb for the tournament top seeds to prey upon in the first round.
The Bearcats come in ranked #30 in the country but that ranking may be a little too generous, as four key contributors from last year’s rotation are gone. Farad Cobb was the team’s most dangerous and consistent outside shooter. A trio of losses in the frontcourt will also hurt. Octavius Ellis averaged 9.8 points, 7.5 rebounds and 1.5 blocks during his senior season. Shaq Thomas was a fellow starter in the frontcourt during his senior season. Thomas averaged 6.1 points and 3.8 rebounds and did a lot of the unnoticed dirty work in the paint. Coreontae DeBerry was the bruiser in the paint. He averaged just 14.7 minutes per game, but was very productive during that time. Perception now becomes the emphasis of this wager.
Albany enters at 1-0 and that 1-0 was attained by virtue of a road win at a Power Conference host in Penn State. This is an outfit that went 24-9 in the 2015-16 season but the market is putting more emphasis on the Danes losing three all-conference guards to graduation in Peter Hooley, Ray Sanders, and Evan Singletary. Enter sophomore Joe Cremo. Cremo, the reigning conference Rookie of the Year and Sixth Man of the Year, will now be catapulted from the first scoring option off the bench to the first scoring option in the starting lineup as the leading returning scorer on this year’s team. David Nichols and Dallas Ennema will fill the spots left by Singletary and Sanders. Nichols was impressive in the recent Purple-Gold scrimmage, filling the basket up with 26 points and looking more chiseled than last year, in a year where Head Coach Will Brown said he learned to compete everyday going up against Singletary in practice. The frontcourt could be the strength of the Danes, the place that has been unreliable in the past. The Danes return Mike Rowley and Greig Stire and also bring back a healthy Travis Charles, who missed all but nine games last year with a heart condition. Big things are also expected from big man Jaraan Lands, who averaged 16.1 points and 8.6 rebounds over two years at Eastern Arizona Community College and has the ability to be a “man-child” as Brown tabbed him at this level.
The Danes took it to a #2 Kentucky team on the road and lost by just seven points in the aforementioned campaign. Oh and one other thing, Albany was a three-time defending America East champion until they were summarily knocked off in last year’s tournament, costing them their fourth consecutive NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament bid. Albany is an institution dedicated to being competitive on a continual basis.
Cincinnati comes in off a win but that win was against a weaker opponent, as they laid the wood to the Ivy League’s Brown University as a 23-point favorite. Brown finished 8-20 last year. The result of Cincy being successful in covering such a lofty point total has them priced higher than they should be here. The Bearcats are stepping it up in level of competition by several pegs even if the team it is playing is cast as yet another middling mid-major outfit. For Albany, this will assuredly be another day at the office and while the Great Danes may be unsuccessful in beating Cincy straight up, they have the experience in taking on comprehensive competition and we’re suggesting that they’ll come in well under the number here.
#579 Binghamton +14½ over ST. JOHNS
Note the 6:30 PM EST start. It has been a rough few years for Binghamton. Since the start of BU head coach Tommy Dempsey’s tenure four years ago, the Bearcats have served as the America East’s whipping boys. Dempsey landed at Binghamton in 2012 after a largely successful seven-year stint as the head coach of Rider. He took over what was, at the time, a disastrous program in desperate need of a rebuild. A series of unfortunate events that started in 2014-15 (star guard and two-time All-AE pick Jordan Reed decided to transfer), (that same year, then-freshman forward Dusan Perovic, who had become a cog in the Bearcats’ lineup, went down for the second half of the season with a torn ACL) and ended last year when junior guard Yosef Yacob missed the season due to a torn labrum. After dealing with the growing pains that are often associated with player development on young teams, many on the roster have now grown into leaders. Senior guard Marlon Beck returns to play as the team’s shooting guard and leading perimeter threat, while junior forward Willie Rodriguez will attempt to become another leader on the court. Those two are set to march onto the floor as starters, heading the most rounded and veteran squad that Binghamton has seen during Dempsey’s tenure. The Bearcats are always getting inflated points because of their poor history but they could win this game outright, just like they did when they beat Cornell, 68-62 in the season opener. Still, this one is all about fading St. John’s.
The Johnnies are coming off a 100-53 season opening victory over Bethune-Cookman, which is equivalent to the Alabama Crimson Tide of NCAAF playing Guelph of the CIS league (Canadian University Football). In other words, put zero emphasis on that Johnnies win. The truth is that St. John’s is a team in big trouble again this year after losing 21 of its last 22 games a year ago. That was Chris Mullin’s first year as coach and this year is not likely to be any better. The Red Storm basically had all new players last year and this year they have to replace half of those minutes with more new faces. Last year’s offense struggled to get into sets, they gave up live-ball turnovers, their three-point shooting was ninth in conference play and their two-point shooting and free throw shooting ranked dead last in the Big East. There are mountains for Chris Mullin to climb, coaching-wise, as he seeks to prove that he is the man for the job of building the St. John’s program into the consistently competitive program the Redmen were in the 80’s and the renamed Red Storm were at the beginning of the century. Problem is, nobody wants to play for the Johnnies and Chris Mullin knows about as much as your Uncle Wolfgang when it comes to coaching college hoops at this level. The Johnnies got blown out regularly last year while allowing 90 or more points an incredible eight times. Last season, the Johnnies lost by 22 to Incarnate Wood and by nine to NJIT. They had one victory the entire year (over UMBC) by more than the points they are spotting here. One cannot spot this many points with the Johnnies and expect to cash their ticket. Upset possibility.
Both plays are to win 2 units
hno:
