College Basketball Betting Free Picks: Arizona @ Washington State
Added on Feb 06, 2010 by Jack Thurman in
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Sportsbooks are offering a huge slate of march madness betting action for Saturday, and we’ll take a look at a Pac 10 confrontation between Arizona and Washington State. The Cougars have the better overall record, but the Wildcats lead them in Pac 10 play and are tied for the conference lead with 3 other teams.
Arizona at Washington State
February 6, 5:30 PM Pacific
Straight up records of the two teams suggest a matchup between a strong home team against a visitor that struggles on the road. The sportsbook pointspread records tell a dramatically different story, however. Wildcats are 13-8 ATS overall, 5-3 ATS on the road, 8-2 ATS in Pac 10 play and 11-7 ATS against teams with winning records. Washington State, meanwhile, has been a moneyburner for bettors in most situations. They’re 6-13 ATS overall and an even worse 1-8 ATS at home, 2-8 ATS in conference and 4-8 ATS against teams with winning records.
More significantly, this is a matchup that works well for the Wildcats. The big rap on Arizona is their sometimes porous defense, but that won’t be as much of a factor against a Washington State team that lives and dies with Klay Thompson and his scoring. Thompson is averaging 21.5 PPG and is one of only two scorers in double digits. The rest of the team have seriously struggled from the field of late, and the Wildcats will gladly try to contain Thompson and force his teammates to beat them. Arizona has a much more balanced attack with four players averaging in double digits led by Nic Wise at 15.4 PPG and have several more solid scoring threats that just need more touches to get into double digits.
First year WSU coach Ken Bone was hired to make the Cougars a tougher team defensively, and they’ve had something of a learning curve in implementing his strategies. This has resulted in a lot more tinkering with the starting lineup and rotation off the bench than you’d like to see well into the conference season. Although we generally like Bone as a coach, we look for this ‘learning curve’ to continue for the rest of the year and will ultimately require at least one recruiting class to bring in the proper personnel to run his system. For that reason, we’ll continue to look for spots to go against a Washington State team that is somewhat overvalued by the linesmaker and general public.
Bet Arizona +1′ over Washington State
