A road game against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights is one of these no-win scenarios for the Indiana Hoosiers. This is a game which is expected to be won, but going on the road is always tough. At least IU will get the benefit of getting its first Big Ten road game out of the way in the middle of the day and in the middle of the week all before the students come back to Piscataway from the winter break.
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HOW THE INDIANA HOOSIERS CAN COVER THE SPREAD
For the most part, Indiana has done a nice job this year of putting away the teams it really should put away. Kennesaw State, McNeese State, IPFW, Morehead State and Alcorn State were all down by at least 20 at the first TV timeout of the second half.
Granted, Rutgers isn't quite as bad as those teams, but this is as easy as it's going to get from here on out for the Hoosiers. Stepping on the throats of the Scarlet Knights early is going to be imperative and it might even be more beneficial to back IU in the first half than for the game.
The Hoosiers just have to continue being the Hoosiers offensively. They aren't good enough on defense to win a game in which they shoot 40 percent or so from the floor, but let's not forget that Yogi Ferrell does a fantastic job running this team and is the main reason why the Hoosiers average 89.1 points per game.
HOW THE RUTGERS SCARLET KNIGHTS CAN COVER THE SPREAD
Eddie Jordan might've made a big mistake when he ripped his team for a loss at St. John's just before Thanksgiving. The Scarlet Knights haven't responded, winning just three of their last 10 games, all wins of which came against horrible teams. Rutgers was +10.5 at home against Monmouth for crying out loud!
Still, the Big Ten season couldn't have come soon enough for a team which had a woeful non-conference year.
It really feels like this whole season is going to come down to whether Corey Sanders and Mike Williams can take over games. Neither of the two are particularly great shooters, but as Sanders showed against Fairleigh-Dickinson just before Christmas, he can take over a game all by himself if he gets hot.
Clearly, stars have to shine when you're talking about upsets in conference play, and Sanders and Williams being awesome are the only keys to victory.
ANALYSIS AND ODDS PREDICTION
There's a real divide between these two teams, and the only reason you'd want to take Rutgers is if the spread was incredibly high. If the spread comes out around Indiana by a dozen or so as we suspect, we'd have a really tough time laying the lumber with a team which has only played one legit road game thus far this year, that being a 20-point loss at Duke.
The best option as we see it is Indiana in the first half as we mentioned before, but with a gun to our head, we'd be willing to give up to around two touchdowns with the Hoosiers against a bad Rutgers team which might struggle to win even three games in conference play this year.
Indiana 82, Rutgers 68
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