College Basketball is back! Tonight, many college basketball teams will play their first game of the season including the Belmont Bruins and the Ohio Bobcats.
This is one of the games with the best value so let’s break down some college hoops odds.
Tuesday, November 9, 2021 – 07:00 PM EST at Ohio Convocation Center
The Ohio Bobcats won the Mid-American Conference last season after defeating Kent State, Toledo and Buffalo to win the conference championship. Once Ohio made the tournament, they took on Virginia as a 13-seed and knocked them off in a 62-58 thriller. Remember, we don’t have any analysis to help us pick games this season just yet. We have to go off assumptions and basically what we saw last year.
Ohio no longer has star guard Jason Preston but they return basically everyone else with Mark Sears, Lunden McDay, Ben Roderick and Ben Vander Plas. Other forward Dwight Wilson III is out for a longer period of time with an injury but there’s depth between Sam Towns and Jason Carter (transfer out of Xavier).
Sears was MAC All-Freshman and could be the next Preston this season for Ohio. Ohio was ranked 40th in the country last season in adjusted efficiency and he’s got a fantastic frontcourt that can put in work. Again, let’s not forget, this team made the NCAA Tournament last year and won a game!
This team has a defense with McDay, who made the MAC All-Defense and shooting with Roderick, who shot nearly 40 percent from downtown. This Ohio team is deeper than they’ll get credit for this year and potentially better than last year, even without Preston. This is an experienced lineup with plenty of upperclassmen. At home, I love Ohio as an underdog here.
On the other hand, Belmont has two fantastic players between Nick Muszynski and Grayson Murphy. Those guys will score double digits but who else? Belmont will still be near the top of the Ohio Valley but a top two-finish just seems unlikely at this point.
The Bruins finished last year kind of lousy and didn’t cover their final five games at home as a favorite and five games at home overall. The Bruins also got away from pick and rolls which was their bread and butter before Casey Alexander took over. However, post-ups will still be big with Muszynski around.
Belmont has been good at forcing tough shots for their opponents. They made teams kind of shoot bad shots throughout the year. But Ohio’s well-coached enough to know what a good and bad shot is and they’ve got plenty of shooters around the perimeter that won’t be taking long mid-range jumpers that Belmont loves to force teams into taking.
Belmont has plenty of freshmen and nobody that averaged more than five points last year after Muszynski and Murphy. All three of their best shooters are gone and while Belmont has added Luke Smith (D-3 transfer), he’s just that. A D-3 transfer playing his first game, on the road, in D1 play.
So I’ll take Ohio +4 at home at -120 for my NCAAB pick. It makes sense to take +3.5 at (-110) if you want to go that route too. As we get more stats, things will be a bit easier. But for now, just play .5 units here if you’re following my sports betting system.
NCAAB Pick: Ohio +4 (-120) via BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review)
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.