College Basketball Picks: The 8th-ranked Virginia Cavaliers are favored on Friday night as they take on the LaSalle Explorers in the Barclays Center Classic. The winner of this game will play the winner of Rutgers and Vanderbilt on Sunday. This game has a start time of approximately 9:30 pm Eastern and can be seen on NBCSN. Here is a look at the matchup and college basketball picks.
LaSalle Explorers
The Explorers went just 15-16 last season but they are off to a solid start this season led by their frontcourt combo of Jarrell Wright and Steve Zack. The Explorers won their first three games of the season and they should come into this game unbeaten at 4-0 as they had an easy game against St. Francis on Tuesday. They were 1-1 against the NCAA basketball betting point spread in their two lined games this season. The Explorers are playing solid defense this season which is the big reason they are unbeaten. They missed Wright in the win over Quinnipiac as he had back spasms but he returned and had 10 points and 12 rebounds in the win over St. Peter’s.
“It’s good. There’s nothing wrong with it. I’m 100 percent right now,” Wright said. The concern for the Explorers is their offense as they are scoring just 58.7 points per game. “For some reason, right now we are a second half team,” Jordan Price said. “Once we begin to start off the game better than we have been doing, we’ll be great.”
Virginia Cavaliers Dominating Defense
The Cavaliers were allowing just 46.8 points per game in their first four games, all wins. The team is scoring about 70 points per game so they are winning games by margins. The team should come into this game at 5-0 as they were favored to rout Tennessee State on Tuesday.
The Cavaliers were ranked No. 8 in the latest AP poll. They have yet to be tested this season, although their win over George Washington was impressive. They did cover that game against GM and it also went under the total. This game on Friday against LaSalle will be their last easy one for a while because they get either Rutgers or Vandy on Sunday and then next week they have games against Maryland and VCU.
College Basketball Picks
This game doesn’t figure to have many points scored as LaSalle is struggling to score while Virginia dominates on defense. We’ll look for this late night contest on Friday night to go under the college basketball betting total.
