Last Night we cashed with Portland +10 over Indiana.
Tonight we move over to College Basketball.
A massive college basketball Saturday card is just one day away, but first we have to make our way through a much smaller Friday night slate. By much smaller, we mean that there are only 12 games on the slate for February 28. One of those games is a battle for first place in the Horizon League between the Wright State Raiders and the Northern Kentucky Norse.
Wright State is very clearly the class of this conference, but the host team is favored by 3 with a total of 145.5.
Wright State has already locked up the #1 seed for the Horizon League Tournament. The Raiders would be forced to share that regular season title with Northern Kentucky because of identical 14-4 league play records if they lost this game, but they have their sights set on something much bigger with an NCAA Tournament berth.
Wright State is now on the road. Half of Wright State’s losses have been in true road games to UIC, Youngstown State, and Green Bay. The last time Northern Kentucky played on its home floor, the Norse lost by 30 in simply embarrassing fashion against UIC. They should be quite motivated to finish strong on Senior Day in this one.
When you look at how the first meeting played out, it was sheer domination from Wright State. The Raiders made 36-of-59 shots from the field, including a 12-of-22 effort three-point range. The scary thing for NKU is that Wright State still turned the ball over 14 times in a game played to 68 possessions. Of course, for those looking at NKU in a positive light, Wright State is unlikely to shoot like that again.
That was the outlier to end all outliers for Wright State. Their 71.2% eFG% in the game was a season high and the 135.6 adjusted offensive efficiency for that game remains a career high. It was an outlier of a different kind for Northern Kentucky, who has not had a defensive performance anywhere near that bad at any point this season.
The 1.389 points per possession allowed by Northern Kentucky rank first and the 1.164 PPP against Oakland rank second, so that is a huge jump from the worst defensive showing of the season to the second-worst. Between Wright State’s situation with the Horizon League #1 seed wrapped up and the regression signs from the first game, maybe you can justify NKU as a 3-point favorite.
On the other hand, this is an important game for both teams. You only get one shot, one opportunity as a low-major team when it comes to conference tournament time. There are no at-large berths for teams like these. Finishing in the top two in this conference means a double bye directly to the semifinals. It also means waiting until March 9 to play another game. You really don’t want bad habits to develop during this period of time. Even though it would seem like Wright State has nothing to play for, staying sharp is a pretty good reason to show up here.
While Northern Kentucky can move into a tie for first and get a piece of that all-important banner, the Norse cannot move up or down either. The one-shot deal in the conference tournament means a lot more to these kids. Winning a shared conference regular season title is further down the totem pole to say the least.
When we look at Senior Day festivities, we also need to look and see who will play and maybe try to figure out how long. The Norse only have three seniors. Two play a good amount and one does not. That won’t hurt NKU too much early in the game, but it is something that you do want to be aware of at this time of the season.
This is a third straight road game for Wright State, albeit with six days in between games. The Raiders are the better team, though. This game could simply come down to threes vs. twos. Wright State shoots 36.3% from 3 on the season, but Northern Kentucky is 35th in the nation at 30.1% in terms of defending the three.
But we look for revenge spot here and take the home team!
Free Pick: Northern Kentucky -3 over Wright St
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