College Basketball Picks – Arizona Wildcats vs. USC Trojans

December 31, 2009 by admin
Filed under: NCAA Baseball Betting 

Thursday, December 31 – 7 PM ET

BetUS NCAA Basketball Sports Betting Odds: USC -8.5

Here are some of the trends as they relate to our NCAA college basketball picks:

  • ARIZ has lost five of its last eight games SU
  • ARIZ has covered one of its last seven games
  • ARIZ has played three of its last four games OVER the total
  • ARIZ has lost its last five road games SU
  • USC has won its last six games SU
  • USC has played five of its last eight games UNDER the total
  • USC has covered three of its last four games
  • USC has won eight of its last ten home games SU
  • USC has covered one of its last seven home games

When the season began, USC appeared to be a team in the midst of a major rebuilding phase. Tim Floyd had left the program, escaping under the cloud of a recruiting scandal that included many matters of investigation regarding the way in which OJ Mayo had come to campus. Demar DeRozan was a "one-and-done" and Taj Gibson had also left for the NBA. There were no scorers coming back aside from Dwight Lewis.

He’s averaging over 12 points, but sophomore big man Nikola Vucevic has emerged to be force, with 13 points and almost ten rebounds, and junior North Carolina transfer Alex Stepheson has bulled his way for 8.7 rebounds and leads the team in blocked shots. If you were to include the Trojans in your college basketball picks, you’d be doing well of late.

You have to give Kevin O’Neill, the journeyman coach who took over in Floyd’s wake, a lot of credit here for restoring order. USC began the season losing games to Loyola Marymount, Nebraska, Texas and Georgia Tech, but they have put together a six-game winning streak, which included a 22-point win over Tennessee, an eleven-point victory over a still-respectable St. Mary’s squad, and another eleven-point win, this one over UNLV, which had been rated at one point this year.

USC is not much on hitting three-pointers (just 3.1 per game), and in fact haven’t had more than three in any of the last five games. The Trojans are not big shooters from two-point range either (44.4% overall), but what they do that has made a difference is defend.

O’Neill has them allowing just 37.2% shooting, and that lends itself well to their style of slowing the pace. Finally, it doesn’t hurt that point guard Mike Gerrity, the Charlotte transfer who is shooting 53% and scoring 14.8 points a game, is in the lineup now. He might be the missing ingredient.

This is a bit of a grudge match, as many in the USC program feel that Arizona stole a few of its freshman recruits, taking advantage of the confusion in the USC program. To add another angle, O’Neill was the coach at Arizona while Lute Olson took a leave of absence, then was let go unceremoniously after Olson came back. Look for USC to exhibit more defensive intensity than usual, as we lay the 8.5 points in our BetUS college basketball picks.

JAY’S PLAY: USC -8.5 ***

(Graded on a scale of 1-4 stars)

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