We’ve got quite a fun Sunday lined up in college hoops with a ton of games and some really interesting matchups. We’ve got a handful of conference clashes on the docket as well, as teams position themselves for what they hope will be some meaningful games in February and March.
We’ve also got a non-conference game of interest in the primetime window tonight. That will be the spotlight game for us here at BangTheBook in Game 741/742 between the Saint Louis Billikens and the Minnesota Golden Gophers.
BetOnline Sportsbook lists Saint Louis at -2.5 with a total of 146. There hasn’t been much movement on the side from the overnights, but the total has gone up a point. This one starts at 8:30 p.m. ET and can be found on FS1 from Williams Arena in Minneapolis.
We’ll preview the game and break it all down with a free pick at the end.
Saint Louis Billikens
A Billiken is said to be a “good luck figure” and was a creation of art teacher and illustrator Florence Pretz back in the early 1900s. So far, Travis Ford’s team has found lots of good fortune this season, though the Billikens have made their own breaks as well. Saint Louis is off to a 6-0 start, including impressive wins over LSU and North Carolina State. This will be the team’s first appearance outside of Chaifetz Arena on the SLU campus, so we’ll see if the travel has any impact. It certainly could, as Saint Louis is third in the nation at 44.6% from 3 and 42nd in the nation at 56.3% from 2. Shooting numbers tend to be lower in road and neutral settings, simply because the sightlines and the shooting backdrops are a lot different. Saint Louis is eighth in eFG% on offense at 59.5% and also 15th in OReb% at 37.9%. They haven’t missed many shots and they’ve gotten back a lot of their misses. Against NC State last time out, Saint Louis had 15 offensive rebounds and a 53-26 edge on the glass overall. Early-season stats can be misleading. Against SIU Edwardsville, Arkansas Pine Bluff, and Central Arkansas, Saint Louis had TO% on defense of 33.5, 30.6, and 35.6. They rank 39th in the nation in TO% at 23.8%, but against their three top opponents, they had a 13.6% TO% against LSU, an 18.1 against Indiana State, and a 10.2 last time out against NC State. That’s not to say that the Saint Louis defense is bad, it’s simply to say that they haven’t forced nearly as many turnovers against the three top-100 teams that they’ve played. For all of Minnesota’s early-season flaws, they are a top-100 team.CLAIM YOUR WELCOME BONUS AND BET COLLEGE BASKETBALL AT BETONLINE SPORTSBOOK