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College Basketball Odds, Picks & Predictions: Friday (1/12)

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AP top-25 teams are just 14-10 since Monday. Yet, we do not have to speculate about further upsets until Saturday, as no ranked teams are among the 34 teams playing on Friday’s 17-game slate.

Our two best bets heading into the weekend focus on two of the marquee games on the slate, with previews of an A-10 and Big Ten matchup.

Read on for Friday’s College Basketball best bets.

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Friday’s College Basketball Best Bets

(Odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook)

Dayton @ Duquesne (-1.5) | O/U 138.5 (-112/-108) 

Duquesne has had five days off to stew over a two-game losing streak, where it dropped games to Massachusetts and Loyola Chicago by an average of 12 points per game. The Dukes look to get right at home, where their only loss is to a 13-1 Princeton team that looks like the class of the Ivy League.

Analyzing this game comes down to whether Dayton’s individual defenders can succeed against Duquesne’s isolation brand of basketball. The Dukes rank in the 99th percentile in utilizing isolation to attack off the bounce, and we expect their elite ball-handlers to cause too many issues for Dayton’s defense, which nearly ranks outside the top 100 in adjusted defensive efficiency.

Dayton’s most eye-popping metric is its 40.5% 3-point percentage, but it has connected on just 34% of long-range shots in its two conference games. Conversely, Duquesne has held its two conference opponents to 23.1% from deep. The Dukes lost by 12 in their only regular-season meeting with Dayton last year, but that was on the road, and they also forced the Flyers into 19 turnovers. Duquesne is forcing turnovers at the 68th-best rate again this season, which should be the difference in a hotly-contested A-10 battle.

Duquesne is just 4-9 ATS this season and covered one of its six games when playing on four or more days’ rest, so consider this a contrarian play on the home favorites.

Bet: Duquesne -1.5 (-110)

Nebraska @ Iowa (-4.5)| O/U 166 (-110/-110)

Nebraska earned arguably the biggest upset of the week in its 88-72 home blowout of No. 1 Purdue on Tuesday. However, the Cornhuskers should not be overvalued for that home victory, if not for anything else than Cornhuskers head coach Fred Hoiberg has long had a great game plan when facing the Boilermakers.

Nebraska held Zach Edey to 23 total points on 14 field goal attempts in the two meetings with Purdue last season, and the Cornhuskers are one of just four teams to hold Edey to 15 or fewer points this year. Now they have a quick turnaround to face an Iowa team that is much different than Purdue to gameplan for, namely because it does not have a 7-foot-4 center to run the offense through.

On many occasions this year, it appeared Iowa would be on pace to be the worst 3-point shooting team in the Fran McCaffery era. However, the Hawkeyes are making 36.2% of their 3-point attempts in Big Ten play, an improvement upon their 34.5% season average. Iowa will look to build on Payton Sandfort’s season-high 24 points in its last game against a good defensive Rutgers team. The Hawkeyes should not meet too much resistance from Nebraska’s defense, especially since they turn the ball over at the ninth-lowest rate in the country.

Iowa is 3-1 ATS when it has the rest advantage over its opponent, which it does over Nebraska by not having played since last Saturday. Meanwhile, Nebraska is just 4-10 ATS as road underdogs since the start of last season, and we are jumping at the opportunity to fade the Cornhuskers when the public will likely rally around them after their high-profile victory over Purdue.

Bet: Iowa -4.5 (-108)

Make sure to check out our other best bets for Friday:


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Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.

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