At long last, the Murray State Racers are back in the NCAA Tournament. They have been to the NCAA Tournament 16 times, but they have never made it to the Sweet 16. No team has made it to the Big Dance more without making it to the second weekend of the tournament, and the team is looking to change that.
Unfortunately, they have a tough matchup in the West Virginia Mountaineers. West Virginia is one of the toughest teams to knock out every season with how well it does the little things.
This war on the floor will go down Friday, March 16, 2018, at 4 p.m. ET at Viejas Arena in San Diego, California. The game will be televised live on TNT. We'll have NCAA basketball odds at BookMaker.eu available for this and every game throughout March Madness.
Opening NCAAB Basketball Betting Odds at BookMaker.eu
West Virginia -9.5Murray State +9.5Over/Under 145.5
This was supposed to be the year that West Virginia finally broke Kansas’ stranglehold on the Big 12. The Mountaineers raced out to 15 straight wins and a top five ranking after a season-opening loss and were one of two teams to beat Virginia all year long. However, after a road loss to Texas Tech, they struggled the rest of the way. West Virginia went 9-9 over the last half of the season, but did make it to the Big 12 Tournament Finals where it lost to Kansas for the third time this year.
Murray State has been one of the best teams in the OVC this decade, but the Racers have rarely been unable to win the conference’s automatic bid. The Racers are generally the conference’s one or two seed, yet they kept getting pipped until recently. This year, they did what they needed to do in order to win the conference though, and covered four straight down the stretch to finish the season 17-11 against the CBB betting line.
Matchup to Watch
WVU is nicknamed Press Virginia for a reason. Bob Huggins asks his teams to apply full-court pressure in order to rattle teams and throw them off their game. That typically works fantastically against smaller schools, and that factor was a big part of West Virginia’s early season success.
The Mountaineers turn teams over 16.5 times per games on average and force more turnovers than any other team that made the NCAA Tournament.
Murray State does not turn the ball over often, averaging 12 turnovers per game, but this team has not faced a team as athletic as West Virginia.
Key Stat
The Racers have been one of the top defensive teams in the country this season. Opponents have hit just 30.6 percent of their threes against Murray State this season, making this one of the ten best perimeter defenses in the country according to that stat.
Conversely, this is an area where West Virginia’s defense has struggled. The Mountaineers are usually one of the better defensive teams in the land, but opponents have had a ton of success beyond the arc against them this season. They are allowing opponents to sink 37.4 percent of their threes and cannot do that against the Racers. Murray State’s Jonathan Stark and Terrell Miller Jr. aren’t afraid to let it fly from range and have been very efficient on the year.
Free March Madness ATS Picks
In the end, West Virginia is going to be too much, but it is going to be closer than the experts think. This has not been quite the year that the fantastic Jevon Carter was hoping for and some of those frustrations will once again rear their head. The Racers will make this more of a game than they should, but the Mountaineers will end up advancing.
NCAAB Basketball Betting Odds: West Virginia 80, Murray State 76
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