There are only three games on the college basketball slate for Wednesday, and while they may not have the intensity and glamour of the NCAA Tournament, they all carry their own postseason implications. The NIT will award the final two spots for its version of the final four with a trip to New York and Madison Square Garden on the line. Texas and North Carolina State complete the round of games held on campus sites, and not surprisingly both are favored on the opening college basketball betting lines. We also have a trip to the College Basketball Invitational championship series on the line when the DePaul Blue Demons host Coastal Carolina.
BookMaker.eu will have college basketball odds and live betting options for every game on the Wednesday schedule.
College Basketball Schedule for Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Colorado at Texas ( -5.5, 139 ), 9 p.m. ET (ESPN2)
Lipscomb at North Carolina State ( -3, 163.5 ), 9 p.m. ET (ESPNU)
Coastal Carolina at DePaul ( -7, 162.5 ), 8 p.m. ET
Wednesday Opening Lines Report
The semifinal matchup in the CBI between the Chanticleers of Coastal Carolina and DePaul is rather intriguing. If you saw this matchup coming when the field was announced, I hope you put some money on it because you would have made mucho dinero. Typically, teams with sub .500 records at the end of the season don’t get a postseason invite. However, the CBI extends invitations to schools that are willing to pony up a $50,000 entry fee to participate. That’s how you get a pair of teams with losing records into the postseason.
Competing and winning in the tournament got DePaul and CCU over the breakeven point. It also got the Chanticleers a program-changing win over West Virginia, which they knocked off 109-91 in the last game. So the Mountaineers had a down year winning only four Big 12 games. A few years from now nobody is going to know the difference and that victory will live forever on the CCU campus.
This game has the largest opening line of the abbreviated slate with the home standing Blue Demons laying 7-points. The difficult Big East schedule has something to do with the spread. DePaul was a 7-point favorite for its opening CBI contest with central Michigan and easily covered in a 100-86 win. The Demons spotted Longwood 14.5-points in their last game and cost backers some coin by failing to cover in a 97-89 decision.
While the line is the highest on the board, it’s the lowest the Chanticleers have played against in their CBI run. CCU failed to cover the 11-point spread in its first round win over Howard and they won outright as a 10-point dog against WVU. Overall the Chanticleers are 10-6 ATS on the road this season.
The two NIT quarterfinal games are bit tighter on the opening line. The Longhorns are spotting Colorado 5.5-points despite having a worse overall record and displaying poorer form down the stretch. Texas lost three straight and five of six before downing South Dakota State and Xavier in its first two tournament games. The Horns were favored in those two games and failed to cover, extending their ATS losing streak to five in a row.
The Buffs are headed the other way having won seven of their last eight games with the only defeat in that span to Pac-12 champion Washington in the conference tournament. Going back even further, they have triumphed in 12 of their last 15 outings with the other two losses taking place on the road. CU hasn’t played a true road game in a month.
In case you haven’t noticed, the Lipscomb Bisons are a good basketball team. They were deserving of an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament, but the committee frowns on giving multiple bids to strong mid-majors. Instead middle-of-the-pack teams from the power leagues get in. Did we need to see Ohio State and Ole Miss in the NCAA’s? I would have preferred a team like Lipscomb given the chance to perform on the big stage.
The Bisons toppled Davidson in the first round and knocked off No. 1 seed UNC Greensboro, 86-69, in the second round. Five of their seven losses were to teams that qualified for the Big Dance and none were by more than eight points. The Bisons are a 3-point underdog for their tilt with NC State.
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