Sometimes a step up in class is a dose of reality. That seemed to be the case last night for Boise State. They were rolled by Colorado State and we picked up another winner with the spotlight game preview here at BangTheBook. That makes it three in a row for this week and a nice little run over the last couple of weeks.
With a big Thursday board, we’ve got a lot of big lines on the card. We’ll look to something of a “chase game” on the bottom of the schedule as New Mexico and Fresno State square off at 11 p.m. ET on CBS Sports Network. Fresno State is -6.5 with a total of 131.5 in this one at Bovada Sportsbook.
We’ll break this one down from both sides and find a play on the Mountain West Conference nightcap.
New Mexico Lobos
Things are not good for Paul Weir’s team. Forced to play every game away from home to this point because of COVID protocols in New Mexico, the Lobos are 5-9 straight up, but just 1-9 in conference play. The Lobos have two wins over a Division I team this season and one came against San Jose State a week ago. They followed that up with a 12-point loss to arguably the worst team in the conference. In New Mexico’s defense, their other MWC opponents have been Boise State, Nevada, Utah State, and UNLV. Those are four of the five best teams in the conference along with San Diego State. The Aztecs are on deck after this back-to-back set with Fresno State. A complete offensive outage has plagued the Lobos to this point. They are 301st in the nation in adjusted offensive efficiency per Bart Torvik and Ken Pomeroy. That is more generous than the 330th ranking from Haslametrics. UNM is 342nd in the nation in eFG% on offense. They’re 346th in 3P% and 331st in 2P%. They’re even 329th in FT%. This is a terrible shooting team. The lone redeeming quality for the Lobos is that they are a top-100 team on the offensive glass, but that may simply be a byproduct of missing a lot more shots than most teams in the nation. It isn’t just the offense that falls short for the Lobos. They are also 283rd in eFG% defense and 305th in ORB% against. The schedule has been tough in conference, there is no question about that. It still doesn’t excuse just how ugly the stats have actually been.CLAIM YOUR WELCOME BONUS AT BOVADA SPORTSBOOK