Both Pittsburgh and Illinois are returning the vast majority of their starting lineups for this season. In my opinion it makes them much easier to play tomorrow. What do you guys think?
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UC IRVINE graduated one of there top 2 scorers. And are a very bad defensive team and play in one of the strangest conferences in the country in the Big West. Illinois is balanced, experienced,youthful, and coached well.
Illinois -22 looks like a good play to me in this spot. Im not sure about the RI and PITT game
I kinda thought the line was gonna be Illinois -32Comment -
it is very important. I like Pitt on the opener. RI is a talented team, but Pitt
is tougher. Thing about Pitt they can get very careless. Still, take a look at this link,
the tradition of consecutive opening wins is impressive.
the line is steep though. i will wait for 2h.
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Pitt and Illinois both have elite coaches though. And that is a pretty big factorComment -
I agree with all that you guys said. I really like Illinois tomorrow and I'm strongly leaning towards Pitt as well. Good luck!!Comment -
One of the things I like about College Basketball is the SEVERE talent shortage. Consider the following: there are 3x more D-I basketball teams than D-IA football teams, yet there are less than half as many picks in the NBA draft than the NFL draft, and a lot of those picks go to foreign players. There isn't nearly enough talent to go around, and what little there is clusters at hot spots like Ohio State, Duke, UNC, Kentucky, Kansas, etc. In over 30 years, the 2002 Maryland Terrapins are the only team that won the NCAA Tournament without any McDonalds High School All-Americans on the roster (and it didn't hurt that they played a Mike Davis-coached team in the final).
The end result of this structural imbalance is that as few good teams as there are, there are *even fewer* good teams who play at full speed. Teams like MSU and Wisconsin are good but they play slow, so they might not cover big spreads even if they vastly outmatch their opponent. Teams like Kentucky and North Carolina on the other hand, are practically better than some D-League teams and they let guys run, jump, and dunk all over RPI sub-250 teams.
Illinois has a tendency to shoot a lot of mid-range jumpshots, but they haven't been this talented since Dee Brown and Deron Williams. Jeremie Richmond has the talent and athleticism to run. Myers Leonard was the only Top-100 recruit over 7 feet tall in the nation. Add them to some big time players like Brandon Paul and DJ Richardson, a quality PG in Dmitri McCamey, and two skilled bigs like Davis and Tisdale, and Illinois should be able to cover easily.
Texas started the season crush/kill/destroying everybody, before they basically stopped playing defense. They took big hits to their depth at point guard, losing Varez Ward and Dogus Balbay, but that was no excuse for going from #1 in the country to an 8 seed choking vs. Wake Forest in the first round. I don't know if they've improved chemistry-wise, but adding Cory Joseph and Tristan Thompson can't hurt. Navy is a bad team in the Patriot League which doesn't have scholarship athletes. Texas will run, jump, and dunk with impunity.
Pitt/Rhode Island was a close game last year, and it will be close again this year. Maryland lost Vasquez so I don't know how good they are this year, but Seattle University is a very dangerous D-II team.Comment -
I took Illinois -21.5--- they should win by 30-35
Rd Is/Pitt is tough--- Pitt basically never looses at home to non-conf foes. I was leaning Rd Island's way, but they have some injury problems, and not a lot of depth. Will just watch for future reference--- these home teams play again on Wed, and the others go to 2 sites next week for 3 games in 3 days.
Texas should win by 37-40
Seattle U is Div 1-- and are eligible for NIT or other 2 post season tournys (just not NCAA's yet) Coached by Cammeron Dollar-- were 17-14 last year with a pretty good schedule. Like to run and gun. But, I thought this number came in a little low-- guess everybody else knows about Seattle too.Comment
