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Welcome back! In this article every week, we'll be giving you some of the top college basketball games and betting picks for Wednesday, January 27, 2021.
Last week's slate of games had a chance to provide a big boost, if not for some late game heroics in route to a bad beat. Chattanooga notched a key conference road win over Samford, and Nicholls State and Houston Baptist easily crushed their over by over 20 points. Western Carolina's offense came out flat giving us the first loss for the week, but the real heart-wrenching game was in Nacogdoches, Texas. Stephen F. Austin entered the final minute of play up 19 points (easily covering the 13.5-point spread). The Lumberjacks proceeded to allow a few buckets, and to miss a pair of free throws inside 10 seconds, only to allow a buzzer-beating "meaningless" 3-pointer from the corner to win by 12, and thus not cover the spread. The 2-2 week moves the season-long record to 18-10.
Here are some of the top college basketball betting picks. Let me know your thoughts, and follow along with the action on Twitter @fredetterline. All game times below are Eastern Standard Time. Season record to date: 18-10.
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Brigham Young (BYU) @ Pepperdine - 3:00 pm
Mark Pope is a well-traveled young coach, who was an NBA draft pick, and played for a few years in the NBA before pursuing a career as a college basketball coach in 2009. Pope has spent the vast majority of his coaching career as a highly successful collegiate coach in the state of Utah. After a five year run as the top BYU assistant, he earned the Utah Valley head coach job, taking the Wolverines to the CBI three straight years. Now in his second season as the man-in-charge in Provo, Pope's team is looking likely to make an at-large appearance in the NCAA Tournament around the 7-to-10 seed. The Cougars have relied on strong guard-play, and a pair of towering transfer big men to the tune of a 13-3 start. The top four scorers are all transfers from other programs, with top-scoring guard Alex Barcello (Arizona), guard Brandon Averette (Utah Valley), 7-foot-3 Dutch center Matt Haarms (Purdue), and 6-foot-11 stretch-5 Richard Harward (Utah Valley). In the Cougars' 65-54 home win in the first match against Pepperdine, the defense stifled the Waves, keeping the top scorers Colbey Ross and Kessler Edwards without a point in the last 4 minutes and 50 seconds of the game. Coach Pope will need to keep his team focused with a strong finish down the stretch to cement their likely-NCAA Tournament bound status. Interestingly, center Matt Haarms is the only player on the team with experience playing in the NCAA Tournament.
This rescheduled game was originally planned to be played on New Year's Day, but was postponed due to the Coronavirus, as so many games have been postponed this year. The Pepperdine Waves rely heavily on junior forward Kessler Edwards (18.3 ppg) and senior guard Colbey Ross (16.3 ppg) for over 45% of their scoring on the average night. Head coach Lorenzo Romar kicked his head coaching career off in Malibu in 1996, and after stops at Saint Louis and Washington, finds himself back for a second tour of duty. Coming off of a 16-16 season, Romar scoured the graduate transfer market for immediate contributors, bringing in Swedish forward Kene Chukwuka from Pitt. Chukwuka, a 6-foot-9 native of Stockholm, Sweden, played for two seasons for Pitt in the ACC and sat out last year with an injury, before joining the Waves. Chukwuka's perimeter shooting has taken a large step forward in the 2020-2021 season, but his rebounding still lags behind his other starting centers in the West Coast Conference.
Pick: BYU -6
Houston Baptist @ Incarnate Word - 8:00 pm
I could stop this paragraph after once sentence - the Houston Baptist Huskies play at an incredibly fast pace, and play little-to-no defense, a recipe for points. Coach Ron Cottrell still hasn't quite found the formula to build a consistent winner, but he has been able to assemble a team of decent shooters and kids who want to play at a fast pace. The Huskies' defense has allowed 82.8 points per game, ranking 339th of the 347 teams playing Division I basketball this year. They've allowed over 90 points a staggering five times already in their 14 games this season. Coach Cottrell's offense is increasingly operating through true freshman guard Za-Ontay Boothman, a 6-foot-1 guard from Buckeye, Arizona. Boothman will be on the court a lot with fellow guards Pedro Castro, Hunter Janacek, and Myles Pierre. The Huskies shoot a ton of three pointers (69th most attempts per game), and with great proficiency (35th best team 3-point field goal percentage). That's about where the success ends. Their rebounding is atrocious (-6.7 average rebounding margin per game), and they allow a 48% field goal percentage from their opponents (323rd in the country). While the program still has some ways to go in terms of competing for a Southland title, Coach Cottrell certainly never has a dull moment in these fun, exciting back-and-forth games.
For as fast as Houston Baptist plays, their counterparts at Incarnate Word will play with similar speed, but with less efficiency. Coach Carson Cunningham is in the midst of his third season in charge, having yet to reach double-digit wins in a season. This year's team is led by sophomore guard Keaton Willis, who made the 5-hour drive to Incarnate Word's San Antonio campus from his home in Sulphur Springs, Texas, near the northeast state border with Arkansas. Willis finds himself in his fair share of isolation plays, and chucks over 14 shots per game. If Willis is off his game, Incarnate Word will have to hope for one of the other six rotation players to step up - all of whom average single-digit scoring. Sophomore forward Marcus Larsson, a 6-foot-11 native of Oslo, Norway, has been a strong force on the glass in Soutland conference play, and is probably the team's second best player at this juncture. With only one scholarship senior on the roster (point guard Des Balentine), the Cardinals will sport a young team, with an international flair (four rotation players from across the globe - Norway, Canada, Nigeria, and Greece), often playing into the tempo that their opponent dictates. If Houston Baptist can set the tone early and start running, expect the young Cardinals to run with them, and a flurry of points.
Pick: Over 145.5
#25 Louisville @ Clemson - 9:00 pm
Coach Chris Mack's Louisville Cardinals are ranked 25th in the current Associated Press Top 25 poll, coming off a win over Duke. Road games haven't been the problem that they usually are this season, with many of the Cardinals' ACC foes not allowing, or severely limiting the amount of fans allowed at games. Louisville holds key wins over Seton Hall, Virginia Tech, Kentucky, Duke, and Pitt, but wishes they would have held on in a road loss to Miami. The team is led in scoring by hometown sophomore guard David Johnson (13.0 ppg) and Radford graduate transfer guard Carlik Jones (18.4 ppg), who is originally from nearby Cincinnati, Ohio. The fruits of Coach Mack's strong recruiting are paying off already, with Johnson, sophomore wing Samuell Williamson, and sophomore Irish forward Aidan Igiehon all providing boosts in their second years on campus after being highly sought after top-100 recruits. The Cardinals sport a solid defense, and an offense that can become too reliant on its stars at times, but capable of reaching high heights.
Coach Brad Brownell's Clemson Tigers are playing in the middle of a difficult stretch, with three straight losses coming at the hands of Virginia, Georgia Tech and Florida State. The Tigers looked like a strong ACC contender early this year, with a 5-0 start to the season that included four wins over non-conference Power 5 programs (Mississippi State, Purdue, Maryland and Alabama). Senior forward Aamir Simms entered this season with high hopes for an All-ACC type of season, but that has not yet come to fruition on a consistent basis. Simms' efficiency on offense has improved, but his rebounding and usage both dropped thus far, and his problem with fouls (3.1 fouls per game) has caused his minutes to drop nearly five minutes per game over the 2019-2020 season. The Tigers will play a slow, grind-it-out style, and if the game is in the low 60s, they will have a shot.
Pick: Louisville +1
Central Arkansas @ Southeastern Louisiana - 9:00 pm
The Central Arkansas Bears were stunned when star center Hayden Koval opted to transfer to fellow mid-major program UNC-Greensboro. Coach Anthony Boone has been unable to bring a winner to Conway, Arkansas, this year with a 3-11 record, albeit a 2-4 record in conference so far (wins over McNeese State and New Orleans). The loss of Koval has thrust 6-foot-7 Pitt graduate transfer Samson George, and 6-foot-10 true freshman Churchill Bounds into territory that neither is really prepared to be the starting center. The Bears do have one experienced and proven scorer in senior wing Rylan Bergersen, who started his career at BYU. Bergersen is a volume outside shooter that is averaging 17.1 ppg and is putting together an All-Southland season. His supporting cast, however, is still relatively young. French wing Eddy Kayouloud and Canadian guard Khaleem Bennett look like future difference-makers, but their play is far too inconsistent at the moment. Fourth-year starter Deandre Jones is a steadying hand at the point guard position, and went to high school with the star Bergersen. Coach Boone has some pieces, but the lack of a center has resulted in poor rebounding, virtually no shot-blocking presence, and the 260th ranked 2-point field goal percentage.
Southeastern Louisiana has found itself in the Southland cellar once more, sitting at 4-11. Coach David Kiefer has navigated his team to two conference wins (McNeese State and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi). Senior guard Keon Clergeot, a Winter Haven, Florida native, is the team's leading scorer at 15.4 ppg. For as bad as the Bears are at defensive rebounding, the Lions may actually take the cake. The Lions are one of the better teams in the country in offensive rebounding (33rd in the country with 12.7 offensive rebounds per game), but are among the 10 worst teams in defensive rebounding. The rebounding responsibilities have fallen largely to senior Senegalese center Pape Diop and sophomore 6-foot-6 forward Gus Okafor, who is being groomed as the next star player after Clergeot moves on. Diop adds no offensive value, causing the team to sometimes wander without a purpose before asking Okafor or Clergeot to create a shot near the end of a shot clock. For watching purposes, this game would rank low on my card, but there should be some value on the better team (Central Arkansas) as a small favorite.
Pick: Central Arkansas -2
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