28
NOV
2018

NCAAB Plays for 11/28

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A 2-0 night on Tuesday with winners on Nevada and Montana State. Hopefully that’ll be the start of a nice little run moving run moving forward and it continues today, here’s what I’ve got for Wednesday….

Old Dominion (-3.5): This figures to be a tough game for the VCU offense and I really see them having a hard time scoring. The Rams are off to a 5-1 start but let’s just say it isn’t because of their offense. As a team they rank 245th in offensive efficiency and they figure to be tested tonight by an Old Dominion defense that ranks 46th in defensive efficiency. On top of that the Monarchs play at one of the slowest tempos in the nation and it’s been that way for years. It’s very unlikely you’ll see much in the way of easy buckets for VCU, so simply enough they are going to need to find a way to execute in their half court offense in what looks to be a snail slow, grind it out kind of game. The Rams don’t shoot it well from 3 point land and they don’t have any inside scoring threats that really worry you either. On the other side the truth is the Old Dominion offense is nothing to write home about in their own right. They only rank 181st in offensive efficiency and for lack of a better way to put it, they are bad… but not as bad as VCU on that side of the ball. At least on the ODU side there are guys like Stith and Carver that are solid players and good enough to find a way to get their points. Neither are shooting very well so far this season but track record shows they are both better shooters than what they’ve shown in the early stages this year. The total of only 127.5 shows what kind of game this is expected to be. At the end of the day both teams should have trouble scoring but as I mentioned in the open I think it’s going to be combination of offensive trouble and the slow pace that’s going to do in the Rams. I see something like a 68-60 type win for the Monarchs.

San Diego (+6.5): This is a good Toreros team and I disagree with the early line movement in this game. This thing opened up at 5 and is now at 6.5. San Diego is off to a 5-1 start and I’ll admit 4 of those games have been against cupcakes. However they’ve done what they should have and won all 4 of those games in blowout fashion. The two tough games they had were a win over Colorado and a near win at Washington. It might come as a surprise to some but this is a USD team that I actually have in the top 80 of my power rankings and I can see them winning over 20 regular season games this year. There really isn’t anything that they do great, but they do everything pretty well. They are 6th in the nation in overall team experience and they have 4 Seniors in their starting lineup. Pineiro and Carter lead the way and they are honestly one of the better 1-2 punches out there among mid-major schools. They combine for 38.8 points per game are both shooting over 50% from the field, and are both nearly 40% from 3 point land. It’d be easy to expect a WCC team to be overwhelmed on the road against an SEC team but I really don’t see that being the case here. USD usually schedules strong opponents in their out of conference games and let’s remember that in the WCC they are seeing the likes of Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s and BYU each year. As well as that they see San Diego State each season so hitting the road to face an SEC team shouldn’t rattle this squad at all. Oddly enough it’s the WCC team (San Dieg0) that will have a size advantage in this game and I already went into detail about the experience edge. Carter is going to be a handful for the Rebels guards to deal with but the real issue is going to be who handle Pineiro. Hinson is likely going to see plenty of time on him and while he’s a nice player, he’s a Freshman and dealing with a Senior who is putting up 22 points a game is going to be a very tough task. I won’t quite call for a Toreros win but I expect him them to hang around throughout and that we’ll have a close game going into the final minutes. From there I think 6.5 points in my back pocket should be enough to get me a cover.

Summary: 

Old Dominion (-3.5)
San Diego (+6.5)

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