The Montana Grizzlies are a hot basketball team, and we do not feel that the fact that they are on the road here visiting the Portland State Vikings is enough to slow them down at their very cheap price.The Grizzlies are 17-7 overall and a nice 13-9 against the spread, and they have won seven of their last eight games and covered four straight. Montana has even won three of their last four road games to improve to 5-6 away from home, and the last time they traveled, they blew out Northern Arizona by 20 points as 1.5-point favorites.
Meanwhile, Portland State is just 10-13 overall and they are only 2-4 in their last six games including a bad unlined loss vs. Seattle University here at home on Sunday. Prior to that, they lost their previous home game by seven points to Northern Arizona, the same team that Montana recently blew out on the road.
The Vikings truly have one of the very worst defenses in the country, as they are allowing a whopping 81.7 points per game on an extremely generous 50.7 percent shooting from the floor overall. In fact, they rank second to last in the entire land out of 347 Division I schools in adjusted defensive efficiency according to the Pomeroy ratings, allowing 1.164 points per possession with only VMI being worse.
I look for Montana to stay hot vs. this dreadful defense, much to the chagrin of the Portland State home crowd.
