The Pick: My 200 Dime winner is the Florida Gators.
The Line: The current line is -6 at the majority of books in Vegas and offshore as of 9:30 AM EST. Be sure to shop around for the best line available.
My Analysis
This one is over before it begins.
Now as soon as Maryland beat Colorado State at the buzzer in a game they should have lost, I knew Florida was going to be a monster play for me.
However, when I found out head coach Kevin Willard didn't show up for the team dinner and the associate head coach gave the team speech: YAHTZEE!!
It's one thing for this Maryland team to take the court tonight to face without question the best team they have faced all year long.
It's another thing entirely to take the court knowing your coach has one foot out the door heading to Villanova to become the coach of the Wildcats.
You are facing perhaps the best team in the country and on top of that, you are dealing with arguably the biggest distraction you can get with your coach leaving!!
It's just a bad scene all the way around for the Terrapins.
The fact of the matter is Colorado State should be playing tonight but the refs let Derik Queen get away with a travel on the game winning bucket.
The smaller Rams outrebounded them (36-26), outshot them (47% to 42%) but as well all saw, got robbed by the refs.
Fact of the matter is if the Rams shoot a little better from 5-21 from behind the arc, they probably win by double digits!!!
Now I get the fact Maryland's 8 losses this year have come by margins of 4, 5, 6, 4, 2, 3, 3 and 1.
But I also get the fact that in their 11 game non-conference schedule they only faced 3 teams from power 5 conferences: Marquette, Villanova and Syracuse!!!
Then they roll into this game tonight with wins over a team from the WAC and a team out of the Mountain West.
So let me get this straight: You struggle to beat a team out of the Mountain West and you want me to believe you can stay with this Florida team????
I get it, Florida didn't look great against UCONN but that was the 2-time defending champs looking to win their 14th straight tourney game!!!!!
They were not going to lay down.
Florida was due for a close game and as bad as they played, they were still up 8 with 41 seconds to go.
Since their 20-point loss to Tennessee on February 1st, they have been basically unbeatable going 14-1 SU and 12-3 ATS.
Of the 14 wins, 12 of those 14 wins have been by 9-points or more!!!!
The two close ones: A 5-point win at Alabama and the 2-point win over UCONN.
This team went into Auburn, the tourney's overall #1 seed and won 90-81. This team beat #2 seed Tennessee 73-43!!!!!!
Against teams that played in this tournament: beat Oklahoma by 22, Texas by 24, Ole Miss by 19, A&M by 19, Missouri by 14 and Alabama by 22.
The bottom line is this: When Florida is good....they are good but when they are great.....forget about it.
And they will be great tonight.
Sometimes the situation just doesn't match up and you are in the wrong place, at the wrong time, facing the wrong team.