California vs. UNLV Pick

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NCAA Basketball Pick – March 21st

The Mountain West and the Pac-12 will be battling it out against one another on Thursday in the second round of March Madness betting action, as the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels face the California Golden Bears.

This is a pretty darn good situation here if you’re a Golden Bear. Cal gets to essentially host this game as a No. 12 seed, knowing that it is playing in San Jose at HP Pavilion. The Golden Bears though, have a lot of work to do to get back to form with which they were playing at prior to the very end of the regular season and the Pac-12 Tournament. They had ripped off eight wins in a row before crashing against the Stanford Cardinal at Haas Pavilion and then losing in overtime to the Utah Utes in the first round of the Pac-12 tourney. Cal has two major stars that it is going to be relying upon here in the NCAA Tournament. The first is G Justin Cobbs, who averaged 15.5 points per game on the season. Cobbs was lights out at the end of the year, averaging 18.9 points per game in his last seven games. He’s also a well-rounded player from the standpoint that he averages 4.8 assists and 3.5 boards per game. The second stud is G Allen Crabbe. At 6’6″, Crabbe is an awfully difficult matchup for most. He averaged 18.7 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 2.6 assists per game this season, and he is knocking down right at two three-pointers per game as well.

The Runnin’ Rebels made it to the Mountain West Tournament Final, but unlike some of the other teams here in the dance out of the MWC, this one doesn’t totally feel like it is going to be around for a long period of time. The resume is awfully impressive for the boys from Sin City, as is the fact that the Rebs allowed just 63.0 points per game in the regular season against a brutal schedule. Offensively, we know that F Anthony Bennett is going to star, as the frosh averaged 16.1 points and 8.1 rebounds per game on the campaign. There are some other bigs as well, such a F Khem Birch that have a big impact on this team. But guards? Therein could lie the problem. G Anthony Marshall and G Bryce Dejean-Jones had good year offensively, but they’re not the same type of guards that the Golden Bears are going to be bringing to the table.

Prediction:

This is a rematch of a game played earlier this year at Haas Pavilion, and we expect to see a somewhat similar result. The Bears were beaten by a point in that game in spite of a good second half, but if you look closer at the stats, you’ll realize that was a game that was given away. Cal missed 13 foul shots, and Cobbs only scored 11 points. If you think that’s all happening again, you’re crazy. The Golden Bears are much better now than they were at the start of the season, and they’ll pull the upset in the 5/12 game in the East. California 71 – UNLV 67