West Virginia vs. Kansas Basketball Picks

Basketball Betting Game Trends

NCAA Basketball Pick – March 2nd

The Kansas Jayhawks are storming towards the Big XII regular season title and perhaps a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. To keep control of both, they’ll have to beat the college basketball betting lines against the West Virginia Mountaineers on Saturday afternoon at Allen Fieldhouse.

The Mountaineers have had a frustrating season for sure. They’re just 13-15, and they aren’t likely to be playing in a postseason tournament. The club has lost three in a row, and it really hasn’t played an impressive game since beating the snot out of the TCU Horned Frogs and Texas Tech Red Raiders on the road back in the beginning of February. Part of the problem is that there just aren’t any stars on this team. There aren’t many teams in America that don’t have a single man scoring more than 9.3 points per game, but that’s the situation that WVU is in at the moment. Going against the Kansas defense probably isn’t going to help matters any on that front. Seven players are good for anywhere between 6.2 and 9.3 points per game, but that’s about all that Head Coach Bob Huggins can preach about in this frustrating season.

Kansas meanwhile, has all of the stars in the world. G Ben McLemore is still the team’s leading scorer at 15.9 points per game, but there are men like C Jeff Withey who could go for a double-double on any given night, and G Elijah Johnson, who is coming off of a 39-point effort against the Iowa State Cyclones. The problem that the Jayhawks might have the rest of the way is a bit of complacency. The squad really didn’t look good on the road at Iowa State on Monday night, and if not for some shoddy officiating, it would have lost that game. There also isn’t a big time game left on the slate until the Big XII Tournament, and any of these losses would be damning for KU’s efforts at a No. 1 seed. As a result, the defense is probably going to have to continue to carry this team. Opponents are only averaging 61.1 points per game against the Jayhawks this year, and foes are only shooting 35.5 percent from the floor on the campaign to boot. The latter number is tops in America.

Prediction:

The Jayhawks aren’t going to lose this game at home, but they might find themselves challenged to score offensively after that big time game in Ames five nights ago. It’s not that we like the spot for West Virginia. We just hate the spot for Kansas, especially laying so many points. Kansas 63 – West Virginia 55