The No. 15 Jacksonville State Gamecocks look to have a world of hurt in store for them on Friday afternoon when they run up against the No. 2 Louisville Cardinals in front of what will no doubt be a pro-Louisville crowd with Bankers Life just a quick two hour trip away from campus. With the Ville ineligible to partake in last year’s NCAA tournament due to a self-imposed ban, they’ll be looking to make up for lost time.
Don't miss the hardwood action from Bankers Life Fieldhouse at 2:45 p.m. ET on Friday, March 17, 2017. Catch every moment of the game live on CBS. We'll have NCAA basketball odds at BookMaker.eu available for this and every NCAA tournament game on Friday’s college basketball schedule.
Odds at BookMaker.eu
Jacksonville State +21
Louisville -21
Over/Under 134
It’s been all one-way traffic on the Redbirds since this line first opened up. Linemakers opened Rick Pitino’s Cardinals as hefty 19 point neutral court favorites, but the betting public simply laughed at that impost raising it to -21 in the blink of an eye. With only 61 percent of the tickets written backing Louisville, some pretty big dollar amounts must have been thrown down on the Midwest region’s No. 2 seed.
With the game expected to be a romp, the correlated move was the over being bet up to 134 from the 131.5 opener. There’s a much larger discrepancy in the betting percentages on the total than the side with 82 percent of the action expecting a high scorer to play out.
The last time Louisville was installed a chalk of this magnitude in the Big Dance, it throttled North Carolina A&T 79-48 to cover the 26 point closing spread. The game combined to go over the 124 point closing total.
Key Stat
90.4 – The number to the left equates to the Redbirds adjusted defensive efficiency per the most up to date Pomeroy Ratings. Jacksonville State averaged less than 70 points per game in the regular season, and just managed to win the OVC tournament by scoring over 70 points once through three games. Bottom line, the Gamecocks are going to have all kinds of trouble putting points on the board when it matters most early on in the game. By then, the lights will have already been turned out.
Matchup to Watch
With the Gamecocks likely to have all sorts of trouble from long range, it will no doubt lead to a number of misses. Louisville possesses a huge advantage on the glass with it outrebounding all opposition by over 6.0 rebounds per game. Jacksonville State’s rebounding margin checks in at +3.7, but most of that production is accrued by a couple of bigs that simply won’t be able to match the Cardinals’ size or athleticism. Both Norbertas Giga and Christian Cunningham are extremely foul prone as well, so you have to imagine Deng Adel and Mangok Mathiang make quick work of them resorting each to the bench for long stretches.
Free College Basketball ATS Pick
It’s been a fantastic story for Jacksonville State who went on to win their conference tournament as a No. 4 seed to punch the programs first-ever ticket to the Big Dance. This is where it all comes to a crashing thud however. Louisville is just too big, too athletic, and too deep for an overmatched Gamecocks outfit to compete with for a full 40 minutes.
Making this all the more a nightmare for the OVC reps is the fact that Louisville forces just under 14 turnovers per game, and the Gamecocks cough it up 13.5 times per game. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the Ville came up with 20+ forced turnovers in this matchup. Oddsmakers seriously couldn’t line this game high enough for me not to back the Cardinals. If there were such a thing as a mercy rule in college basketball, it would be employed at halftime.
College Basketball Odds: Louisville 105, Jacksonville State 63
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