College Basketball Best Bets (Sunday, 2/25/24)

Author: Dylan Lieck | February 25, 2024 | 2:23 A.M. CST

Note: Went 1-1 on our best bets yesterday. Kind of a tough beat on Baylor. Baylor was absolutely dominated in the first half by Houston, but then the Bears were by far the better team in the second half. We were catching 2.5 and Baylor had a free throw with 4.4 seconds to go that essentially ends the game with us covering no matter what happens the final 4 ticks of the clock. Unfortunately the free throw was missed, and the Bears couldn’t buy a bucket in OT. Kentucky was a rocking chair winner, leading the entire way by 20+ and winning by 25. I likely could’ve had a better overall record had I pushed more plays yesterday, but knowing I’m due for a little spill of bad luck considering how hot we’ve been the past month, I didn’t want to push 8-10 plays and have it all go wrong in one day. Nonetheless, 1-1 is still not a bad day, and we’re just going to keep chipping away at the board day-by-day to generate consistent profits. Let’s look at the board for Sunday.

Best Bets: These will be 2U plays. Short summaries as I’m working on a CBB recap video right now.

1) Rutgers -2 vs. Maryland: Rutgers has been playing much better basketball as of late. They are a significantly better team on their home court, and Maryland’s home/road splits are horrific. Rutgers defense will be too much for Maryland and they will really struggle to score in this spot. I like Rutgers a lot here. I think they have a legitimate shot to win it by double digits.

2) South Florida +1.5 vs. SMU: South Florida pulled off the outright upset against FAU last week in front of a sold out crowd for what was probably the biggest win EVER for that program. So it was only natural to think they were going to have a let down the next game as they traveled to 8-16 UTSA a few days later. Despite playing about as bad as they possibly could, and trailing late, USF found a way to make some big time defensive plays down the stretch. They never folded, when it would’ve been very easy to do so. And they found a way to get out of San Antonio with a victory. Now they travel back home for another big time game. If the Bulls win today, it would mean they have a 2 game lead on FAU with just 3 games left to play in the season. There’s a very high chance a win here means an outright regular season conference title for the Bulls. I expect this to be another sold out crowd, and a great environment. Give me South Florida +1.5 as they take down SMU and take a big step towards winning their first ever American Conference Crown.