LAS VEGAS — It was unusual and caught me off guard Tuesday evening. But it shouldn’t have, not in this day and age. At the tip of Long Island, handicapper Tom Barton summed it up accurately.
“Yeah,” he texted me, “why hide any of it at this point?”
Not with point spreads and totals of every collegiate hoops game available in all corners, at all hours, via myriad avenues and devices.
Iowa State had not only just upended No. 2 Houston, but it also made the Cougars the last undefeated team in the country to lose a game.
All of which paled in comparison to the bolder headline, that the Cyclones actually went into a game, in their own Hilton Coliseum, as the underdogs.
Iowa State was getting about 2.5 points in sportsbooks. It beat Houston, 57-53. The “Hilton Magic” mystique endured. Courtside afterward, Cyclones point guard Tamin Lipsey told ESPN of his disenchantment about being a home dog.
This has been a Cyclones theme, as in March when senior guard Jaren Holmes said, “We’re back to being underdogs again.”
Holmes stretched it a bit, into cliché, since Iowa State was finishing the regular season as an expected dog at Baylor. Still, the Cyclones won, 73-58. They opened the Big 12 tourney by again whipping Baylor.
However, Iowa State scored only 58 points in a defeat to Kansas, and followed that with only 41 in a loss to Pittsburgh in the NCAA Tournament in Greensboro, NC.
This spiel must, to a fair degree, hail from third-year coach TJ Otzelberger, who just happened to spend two seasons, through 2020-21, coaching at UNLV, in America’s decades-old sports-gambling HQ.
Perhaps he picked up some jargon from those locals?
Indeed, after the Houston game Otzelberger expounded on the theme, and Lipsey’s parroting of almost the exact words of his coach makes it seem as if this had to emanate from of his pre-game yapping.
“Nobody’s going to come in here and push us around,” Otzelberger said. “Nobody’s going to come in here and bully us. [I’m] not real happy about being an underdog.
“Not that we follow any of that sort of thing, but nobody’s going to call us an underdog at Hilton Coliseum.”
A deeper excavation shows that, over the past three seasons, among teams with at least 20 lined home games, Iowa State is seventh in the nation at 19-8 (70.4%) against the spread inside Hilton. As a home dog, it’s 2-0.
If, of course, anybody follows that sort of thing.
Stats guru Ken Pomeroy doesn’t project the Cyclones to be home underdogs the rest of the season.
Lipsey, a 6-foot-1 hometown hero from right there in Ames, Iowa, leads the Cyclones in average minutes (28.9), points (14.8), rebounds (5.6), assists (5.6) and steals (3.4). He had a team-high 14 points against Houston.
Barton confirmed that such pre-game banter by a coach could indeed serve as motivational fuel, and he found Lipsey’s words refreshing.
“I like to know that the kids aren’t hiding the obvious,” he said. “We know they know, we all can handle it, and just be real and be honest about it.”
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Iowa State, Big 12 championship futures odds
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VMI games are fertile ground for points, profits for college hoops bettors
Even those following Virginia Military Institute must be flabbergasted at what has transpired in Lexington, Va.
Last spring, all five starters bolted from the hoops program, with only one (transferring to a grad school, which does not exist at VMI) offering any kind of kosher explanation.
Second-year coach Andrew Wilson, hired off the James Madison staff before last season, started 2023-24 with nine freshmen among his 13 scholarship players.
However, after a 68-49 defeat at Longwood, on Dec. 17, promising freshman Koree Cotton, a swingman from Miami, hit the transfer portal. At the end of the first week of January, he landed at Jacksonville State of Conference USA.
Pomeroy considered Cotton to be the sole go-to player on the Keydets. Cotton recorded a seven-game stretch of double-digit points in his brief VMI stay, but only 30 points (on 8-of-34 shooting from the field) in his final four games.
Upon his exit, VMI beat a minnow at home and lost, 87-85 in overtime, at Wofford before returning home and losing, 86-64, to Mercer. The bottom fell out in road defeats to Chattanooga (109-61) and Samford (134-96).
Saturday’s lambasting by the Bulldogs (15-2, 4-0 in Southern Conference) dropped VMI to 3-14 and 0-4. Samford set a school scoring record.
“We scored 46 points off turnovers, and that’s pretty good,” Samford coach Bucky McMillan told reporters. “That was a fun game, watching both teams throw in shots.”
Eight Bulldogs scored in double figures. VMI mustered a run late in the first half to trail 72-54 at halftime, but Samford tallied 19 of the first 24 second-half points to ignite the blitz.
VMI is a Mess Royale. How do we profit?
It has now failed to cover in eight of its past nine lined games, and the past four have sailed over their totals. Nothing this season will probably cash like that 162.5 total last time out, which got obliterated by 67.5 points.
On Pomeroy’s big board, VMI has plummeted to No. 355, of 362 Division-I programs.
It plays its next three games at home, and the best foe visits Wednesday in Furman (No. 152). KenPom projections, which many sportsbooks implement, have Furman favored by 14 points, with a 160 total.
Saturday, The Citadel (No. 231) is in Lexington, and KP has it favored by 7, a 143 total. On Jan. 24, East Tennessee State (No. 214) visits and will be about a 9-point favorite, a 147 total.
Safe to say, the safe angles will be taking VMI’s opponents and each OVER, parlaying them if you feel frisky. Weigh the balance after that trio of tilts.
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Keep fading Old Dominion, losers of 11 of its last 12 ATS
Old Dominion coach Jeff Jones, who suffered a heart attack during a holiday tournament on Oahu, took an indefinite leave of absence Sunday to tend to his health.
The Monarchs (4-13, 0-6 in Sun Belt) have lost 10 of their previous 11, and they haven’t covered 11 of their past 12. Old Dominion plays its next four games at home, inside the Ted Constant Center.
Marshall visits Thursday and KenPom projects it Marshall -1. On Wednesday, Jan. 24, James Madison is the visitor and should be about a 9-point favorite. We’ll be taking positions on both of those favorites.
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