With football season officially behind us, all eyes are on the college basketball landscape in the weeks leading up to March Madness. And there’s no better time to dive into the juicy matchups leading us to conference tournament season.
Tuesday’s schedule features five ranked teams in action, including a top-five team in a tricky road spot and two ranked conference foes facing off in a rematch of their tense battle in mid-January.
Here’s how we’re betting the college basketball slate on Tuesday, with odds courtesy of BetMGM:
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CBB Tuesday odds, lines, picks (via BetMGM)
- Providence +1.5 vs. Creighton
- Oklahoma State +1.5 vs. Kansas
Providence vs. Creighton prediction and analysis (7 p.m. ET)
It’s easy to fall in love with Creighton, which ranks 10th in adjusted efficiency and owns the nation’s fifth-longest win streak (eight games). Yet this is a brutally tough spot for the Bluejays against Big East rival Providence.
The Friars have been uneven at times this year, but they’re yet to lose a game at home all season long (13-0) and have won 29 of their last 30 games at Amica Mutual Pavilion. Their physical style plays well in friendly confines: Providence ranks ninth in offensive rebound rate (36.9%) and bullies opposing frontcourts – thanks largely to star forward Bryce Hopkins (16.6 PPG) – while attacking the perimeter defensively.
That’s a great recipe to fluster Creighton, which is predicated on perimeter ball movement and allows the sixth-highest percentage of 2-point scoring (60.2%) in the nation. That formula has worked for the Bluejays to this point, but it also leaves them vulnerable in this matchup against a Friars squad that narrowly lost on the road in these teams’ Jan. 14 clash.
Providence vs. Creighton pick
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Oklahoma State vs. Kansas prediction and analysis (9 p.m. ET)
On paper, this feels like a matchup that Kansas should win against an inferior opponent. In reality? This has “trap game” written all over it against a red-hot Oklahoma State team that nearly clipped the Jayhawks earlier this season.
The Cowboys led by as many as 15 points when these teams met on Dec. 31 in Allen Fieldhouse, where Kansas needed a late rally to escape with a 2-point win. That sparked a 1-4 run for the Pokes, but they’re since won seven of eight games and rank eighth in T-Rank’s power rating over that stretch behind a top-five defense.
Kansas is a paltry 36th in power rating over that same period, having lost four of its last eight games with a 1-3 record in its last four road games. In some ways, it’s surprising that Oklahoma State isn’t favored here in a rematch of a contest it should have won the first time.