Get those brackets ready because madness will ensue for the next three weeks. If the conference tournaments weren’t exciting enough, the real Madness gets underway on Tuesday with a pair of NCAA Tournament play-in games. Oh, but wait. There are several other postseason tournaments that increase the chances of you winning at the betting window.
That’s right, the NIT, College Basketball Invitational and CollegeInsider.com Tournament all have first round games on Tuesday. The difference is the Big Dance takes place on a neutral court while the other tournaments all have better seeded teams hosting in their gym. As a result we’re seeing some large point spreads hit the board. The biggest line is the first-round NIT game in Bloomington, Ind., where the Hoosiers opened as a 19.5-point favorite over St. Francis (PA).
BookMaker.eu will have college basketball odds and live betting options for every game on the Tuesday schedule.
College Basketball Schedule for Tuesday, March 19, 2019
NCAA First Four
Prairie View A&M vs. Fairleigh Dickinson ( -2, 149.5 ), 6:40 p.m. ET (truTV)
Temple vs. Belmont ( -3.5, 155.5 ), 9:10 p.m. ET (truTV)
NIT First Round
Hofstra at NC State ( -9.5, 162), 7 p.m. ET (ESPN2)
Lipscomb at Davidson ( -2, 149.5 ), 7 p.m. ET (ESPN3)
Campbell at UNC Greensboro ( -10, 142.5 ), 7 p.m. ET (ESPN3)
St. Francis (PA) at Indiana ( -19.5, 147.5 ), 7 p.m. ET (ESPN)
Wright State at Clemson ( -14.5, 131 ), 7 p.m. ET (ESPNU)
San Diego at Memphis ( -7, 152.5 ), 8 p.m. ET (ESPN3)
South Dakota State at Texas ( -9.5, 153.5 ), 9 p.m. ET (ESPN)
Loyola-Chicago at Creighton ( -10, 136.5 ), 9 p.m. ET (ESPNU)
Arkansas at Providence ( -5, 144.5 ), 9 p.m. ET (ESPN2)
Dayton at Colorado ( -5, 139.5 ), 11 p.m. ET (ESPN2)
CBI First Round
CSU Northridge at Utah Valley ( -12.5, 157 ), 9 p.m. ET
CIT First Round
IUPUI at Marshall ( -8.5, 167.5 ), 7 p.m. ET
Cornell ( -1, 135 ) at Robert Morris, 7 p.m. ET
Tuesday Opening Lines Report
Since the four play-in games have teams that are ranked close enough to each other by the selection committee, it isn’t surprising to see the opening spreads so low. The committee takes the four lowest seeded at-large teams and the four lowest seeded automatic qualifiers and pits them against each other in the First Four.
As a result we have SWAC champion Prairie View A&M against NEC champ Fairleigh Dickinson in one of the first matchups. Both teams enter on a roll with the Panthers winning 10 straight and 21 of their last 22 games. The Knights won their finial eight games, including the tournament championship over St. Francis (PA), to qualify. FDU opened as a 2-point favorite.
There were some anxious moments for the Belmont Bruins after they fell in the Ohio Valley Conference title game to Murray State. It’s no fun for a mid-major to sweat out an at-large invitation, even for a squad as deserving as this. Belmont went 16-2 in OVC play and 26-5 overall, and that was good enough to get in as a No. 11 seed over teams like Indiana and Texas, and thank goodness for that. The Bruins will carry the torch for the mid-majors and hopefully they do it as well as Loyola-Chicago did last year.
Playing as a No. 11 seed, the Ramblers reached the Final Four with upsets of Miami, Tennessee, Nevada and Kansas State. They did have divine intervention on their side and they didn’t have to play a First Four game, but their run and UMBC becoming the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 shows that the gap is closing in the college hoops ranks.
A matchup of No. 11 seeds has the Bruins facing the Temple Owls. Belmont is laying 3.5-points on the opening college basketball line.
Early round matchups in the other postseason tournaments take place at campus sites and we’re seeing lines reflective of that. All 10 NIT games have the home team favored with only one having an opening line of less than five points and six at 9.5-points or more. The Davidson Wildcats are laying 2-points to the visiting Lipscomb Bisons.
Indiana is a 19.5-point favorite for its game with St. Francis and Clemson is laying 14.5-points against Wright State. UNC Greensboro and Creighton are the other double-digit favorites among the NIT participants.
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