LSU was an emphatic winner last night with the spotlight pick, so we’re 2-1 this week heading into a busy Thursday card. A lot of mid-major conferences are in action this evening and that makes for a lot of good betting value on the board. Several games have been canceled or postponed tonight, unfortunately, so we have to work around that, but that is the nature of the beast this year with COVID still lingering.
There is a total I really like in college hoops tonight and that game will be the one in the spotlight for us tonight. That is the game between Eastern Kentucky and Belmont down in the Ohio Valley Conference. Belmont is looking to improve to 15-0 in OVC play and should do so as an 11.5-point favorite against EKU. The total on the game sits at 159.5 at Bovada Sportsbook.
Eastern Kentucky Colonels
Spoiler alert. Eastern Kentucky is third in the nation in adjusted tempo. The Colonels like to push the pace whenever possible and they’ve played all of their games this season to at least 72 possessions. They’ve had many that have gone much higher than that. This is a pretty good EKU team as well. They suffered home losses in step-up games to Austin Peay and Murray State and Morehead State, but properly handled their affairs against the lesser teams in the league. Belmont is not a lesser team. This does indeed look like a spot where Eastern Kentucky could get blown out. Those three losses were by 13, 15, and 12, so it is pretty interesting to see this line come down a little bit from the 12.5 it opened. The Colonels don’t really stand out offensively from the field. They are 176th in 3P% and 187th in 2P%. One thing that they do really well is take care of the basketball. They rank 56th in TO% on offense. Eastern Kentucky likes to shoot threes. In conference play, the Colonels are second at 36.3% on triple tries and they are third in 3P Rate at 42.4%, which means that over 42% of their shot attempts are threes. They’ve continued to take good care of the basketball in OVC play, so they’ve gotten up a lot of those three-point shots. They actually aren’t an overly efficient offense, but rack up points with volume. Defensively, Eastern Kentucky forces a lot of turnovers. The Colonels are first in the OVC in TO% on defense at 24.4% and fifth nationally at 25.1% for the season. One big area of weakness on defense is that the Colonels allow a lot of offensive rebounds.CLAIM YOUR WELCOME BONUS AT BOVADA SPORTSBOOK