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College Basketball Odds, Picks & Predictions: Monday (3/11)

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While conference tournaments have been going on ever since the start of last week, today marks the first official day of the college basketball postseason, as all regular season games are completed. While none of the tournaments from the power conferences begin until Tuesday or Wednesday, there is still plenty of intriguing action, including two more tickets to the “Big Dance” being punched tonight in the Southern and Sun Belt Conferences.

Read on for Monday’s College Basketball best bets.

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Monday’s College Basketball Best Bets

(Odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook)

Northern Kentucky (-1) vs. Milwaukee | O/U 151 (-110/-110) 

Milwaukee enters this matchup on a five-game winning streak, with two of the victories coming against its biggest rival, the No. 3 seed Green Bay. Some will argue the Panthers are lucky to be in the semifinals, as they played Green Bay in the third meeting with the Phoenix’ best player, Noah Reynolds, still dealing with an ankle sprain. However, despite it being Reynolds’ first game action in five games, the point guard did not look hobbled, exploding for 27 points on 11-of-20 shooting. Thus, the Panthers earned every bit of their spot in the semifinals, and are a great bet to keep busting the Horizon League bracket.

Northern Kentucky is a worthy favorite as the defending champions of the league, but Milwaukee has done well to overcome its deficiencies, namely a defense that ranks 317th in adjusted defensive efficiency and 330th in offensive rebounding percentage allowed. The Panthers rank 62nd in effective field goal percentage and 24th in free throws rate during their five-game winning streak, per Bart Torvik. In addition, their seventh-ranked tempo in that span has been difficult for their opponents to handle, and the Panthers have attacked the rim with reckless abandon, paying their aggressiveness off with the 13th-best two-point shooting percentage (59.8%).

Milwaukee and Northern Kentucky split the two regular season meetings, and the Panthers will not enter this game intimidated by a Norse squad that has won 20-plus games in back-to-back seasons entering this year. The Panthers have covered two of their last three conference tournament games, while Northern Kentucky is just 2-4 ATS in neutral site games since 2022. The Horizon League has always had unpredictable results in the conference tournament, and Milwaukee has a good chance to add to that chaos, and will cover the spread at the very least.

Bet: Milwaukee +1 (-112)

Saint Mary’s (-9) vs. Santa Clara | O/U 134.5 (-110/-110)

One negative surrounding Santa Clara entering this matchup is that the top four teams in the league were a combined 38-2 SU against the bottom five teams, but the two losses were both by Santa Clara, as Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga took care of business and were a combined 30-0 against the league’s worst teams. A positive is that San Francisco went 11-1 against teams not named Saint Mary’s or Gonzaga, but one of those losses was to Santa Clara, proving the Broncos can be competitive against the league’s top tier. 

Santa Clara would have likely swept San Francisco, but it lost by one point on the road in a game Adama Bal did not even play in. Since Bal returned from a three-game absence, he has averaged 16 points per game over the last four games, and his impact on the offense is vital considering he ranks in the top 14 in the conference in the percentage of his team’s possession and shot rate.

After getting blown out by 24 points at home by Saint Mary’s, Santa Clara made the necessary adjustments and it was a much closer game (a five-point loss) in the rematch at Moraga. The Broncos shot 42.1% from beyond the arc and scored 1.18 points per possession against the normally impenetrable Gaels defense, and we like the fact that they have a game under their belts already in this tournament, while Saint Mary’s has been waiting around for nine days.

For as dominant as Saint Mary’s has been from a wins and losses perspective in the early rounds of this tournament, it has covered the spread in just one of its last six conference tournament games since 2020. Saint Mary’s has appeared in the conference championship game four times in the previous five seasons, and that will likely have a lot of people backing the Gaels, while we prefer to be on the contrarian side with Santa Clara in this matchup. One could probably wait for a better number as there are plenty of 9.5s available at competing sportsbooks, but we are comfortable playing the underdogs down to +9.

Bet: Santa Clara +9 (-108)

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

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

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