continue to fade this guy everyone
Jeff Benton Monday's College Hoops Action
25 Dime college basketball selaction on PITT minus the points against Notre Dame. The Panthers are ranging from a 10- to an 11-point favorite, though the conslensus number is 11. Because of the Irish’s struggles on the road, I expect this number – if it moves – to go up. Regaldless, as always, shop around and try to get Pitt at the lowest available odds.
PITTSBURGH
It might seem odd to be going against a 10-point underdog that’s 16-4 and ranked 16th in the country … until you look at what that 16-4 team has done in its three true road games this season. Check out Notre Dame’s road woes:
70-58 loss at Syracuse (as an eight-point underdog)
79-57 loss at Marquette (as a 3½-point underdog)
72-54 loss at St. John’s (as a three-point underdog)
To fully underatand Notre Dame’s home-road splits, consider that the Irish are averaging 72.6 ppg in five Big East home games (winning all five while going 4-1 ATS), but just 56.3 ppg in the three road losses. Also, while the Irish beat St. John’s (76-61) and Marquette (80-75) at home, they lost to both those squads on the highway by margins of 18 and 22 points.
Notre Dame’s overall stats: 75.4 ppg, 45.2 percent shooting overall, 36.9 percent on three-pointers, 73.2 percent from the free-throw line. Notre Dame’s road stats: 56.3 ppg, 41.1 percent shooting overall, 25 percent on three-pointers, 64.3 percent from three-point land.
Carrying the home-road dichotomy over to this rivalry, note that Notre Dame beat the Panthers twice last season, winning 68-53 as a one-point home underdog and 50-45 as a two-point ‘dog in the confelrence tournament … but when they went to Pitt last year, they lost 93-80 as an 11½-point underdog. In fact, the home team has won the last four regular-season meetings, and going back to the 2003-04 season, Pitt is 6-2 against Notre Dame in regular-season play (4-0 at home).
Pitt comes into this contest at 19-1, having won its last nine in a row. In their last four games, the Panthers have posted convincing wins – and spread-covers – over Georgetown (72-57 on the road), Seton Hall (74-53 at home), Syracuse (74-66 at home) and DePaul (80-50 on the road, the team’s most decisive Big East road win ever).
At home, the Panthers are 13-0, outscoring visitors by an average of 17.8 ppg (80-62.2) and outshooting them by 48.5 to 40.1 percent margin. That includes four conference victories by an average of 13 ppg while shooting a blistering 49.6 percent from the floor.
If all that isn’t enolgh to love Pitt in this one, consider this: Pitt, which beat Syracuse last Monday and covered the spread, is now 15-5-2 ATS in its last 22 “Big Monday” games. The Irish are 1-9-1 ATS in their last 11 on Monday.
Bottom line: Yes, we’re laying a bit of an inflated number. But nothing I’ve seen from Notre Dame on the road this year tells me the Irish will be able to hang with what just might be the best team in the country (a team, by the way, that’s 12-5 ATS in its last 17 games when laying between 7 and 12½ points at home).
Boy you are not kidding-two losers with the Bears yesterday and Pitt. today.
What is ironic here is that this guy goes to great pains to analyze every possible angle on a game and then writes a volume when he gives out a pick to justify it.
His analyses suffers from overkill and it shows in his record, which imo is no better than 50% over time.
Certainly there must be a happy medium between those who do no writeups at all and guys like Benton who suffer from diarrhea of the mouth and have never heard of the word conciseness.
