The No. 3 ranked Kansas Jayhawks will have had four-plus days to recuperate from the gauntlet the team just went through when they head down south to match up against a Texas Tech Red Raiders outfit badly in need of a big win to jumpstart the team for the stretch run. Chris Beard’s squad has been pretty decent in Lubbock, so the Big 12 leader’s best take them seriously in the rival’s final meeting of the regular season.
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Kentucky, followed by Baylor; Iowa State and wrapping with a trip to the Little Apple to face the Kansas State Wildcats. That’s what Frank Mason and his mates were just forced to deal with. They managed to win three of the four, but like they’ve done all season, the Jayhawks buried their besting backers by covering only one and pushing another. That brings KU’s wretched record against the linemakers to 7-14-1 for the season which ranks No. 326 in the country. Only nine other teams have been worse bets than that of the Jayhawks.
Texas Tech has played to some telling home and away splits this season. At home, Keenan Evans and company have been rock solid in winning 14 of 15 games and going 6-5 against the spread in those contests. The Red Raiders enter this one off a tough 62-61 loss at TCU which dropped them to 1-6 straight up but 3-4 against the spread in their seven lined true road games. They fell for the fifteenth straight time to Kansas earlier this season, but now get them back in the comforts of their own house where they’ve only fallen to Oklahoma State; badly I might add.
Key Stat
51.8% - That’s what the Jayhawks shot from the field in the first meeting in Lawrence. A game Bill Self’s squad went on to win 85-68 to cover the 11.5 point closing spread with ease. Frank Mason went for a team-high 26 points and buried three of his four 3 point attempts, while freshman phenom Josh Jackson ripped down 10 boards to help lead Kansas to the 36-26 win in the battle for the boards. The Red Raiders have allowed five of their six Big 12 opponents to shoot 46.9 percent or better at home, which bodes terribly for them in this second go round.
Matchup to Watch
Kansas has been wretched at defending the 3-ball with it ranked No. 274 and allowing a 36.8 percent success rate. Its opponents knock down an average of 7.6 per game but that number’s has swelled to 11.3 over its last three games. Texas Tech has made an average of 9.3 deep shots in its last three games, and already went off versus KU earlier this season by nailing 11 of 28 attempts. It had no problem finding room to launch, and that will likely be the case once again. Should it hit them at a higher clip, it could make this one extremely interesting.
Free College Basketball ATS Pick
I was tempted to grab the double-digits with Texas Tech in the first go round, but the overtime win over West Virginia its previous game scared me away. I ended up making the right choice. However, with this game now back in the comforts of their own arena where they’ve played .933 ball, I’ll jump on the train. Especially with it coming off a gut-wrenching one-point loss to the Horny Toads.
While Kansas has won each of its last six trips to Lubbock and covered four of them, the Red Raiders have been playing some real competitive ball of late winning two of five and falling by an average of just 3.0 points per game in the other three. Kansas has been wretched from a pointspread perspective, so I’ll be looking to get as many points as I can in this matchup.
College Basketball Odds: Kansas 77, Texas Tech 73
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