Dayton vs. Duquesne: College Basketball Odds & Picks (Friday)
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.
Here are Friday’s College Basketball best bets. Below we dive into Dayton vs. Duquesne.
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Friday's College Basketball Best Bets: Dayton vs. Duquesne
(Odds courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook)
Dayton vs. Duquesne
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)
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Mike Spector is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeSpector01.