[regularguy]

This is a play that I realy like.

Santa Clara is a decent team from the fairly strong WCC (Gonzaga, St. Mary's). They have a big guy -- I mean BIG guy (6'10", 305 lbs, junior) -- underneath, John Bryant. He looks like an NFL tackle, but actually has excellent basketball instincts and good hands (23.6 points, 9.4 rebounds, and 2.4 blocked shots per game). They have two guards -- Johnson and Angley --who score 10 to 15 per game themselves, and who can get the ball to Bryant. They are scrappy on defense, giving up 63.1 points per game, best in the WCC. I have seen Santa Clara play one time this year. They seem to be well-coached and motivated. Bryant is hard to stop. Their only loss has been to Nevada, in Reno, and Nevada, despite their struggles this year, are still tough at home. Santa Clara gave Nevada a good tussle in that game.

Eastern Washington is a terrible team, picked in preseason polls to finish at or near the bottom of the rather weak Big Sky Conference (Montana and Weber State might be OK). Their two wins have been fairly close ones over UC Riverside (they were down by 14 at one point in that game) and Alaska-Anchorage (Division II) -- not much to brag about. The program appears to be in pretty bad shape. They have a new coach (Kirk Earlywine), who was not hired until June and reportedly wanted to get out of his contract and go to Ball State before the season started. He probably saw that he has very little talent to coach. They lost a lot of their team to graduation and defections (players left when the last coach left). They have one returning starter, Kellen Williams, who is a pretty good forward, but only good for about 10-15 points in this game. There is certainly noone underneath capable of stopping Bryant; Bryant will score 25-30 tonight. On the other end, Santa Clara's scrappy defense is going to snuff out what little offense Eastern Washington has.

Santa Clara's last two wins were over Utah by 15 and Sac State by 12, both on the road. They should beat Eastern Washington by more. This should not be a contest. I'm betting on Santa Clara to cover the 8.

[flyingillini]

I took E. Washington +9.5

[bigdog3580]

You both won. WOW. I was on Santa Clara also. Squeaked it out.

Nice call Regularguy!

[regularguy]

Nice. We both squeeked that one out.

[That's hilarious. We posted those at exactly the same moment and used the same phrase -- except you spelled "squeaked" correctly.]