posted January 7, 2008 at 18:43 in NCAA B Articles

As college basketball bettors we can’t be elitists. Just because we like to wager on Pac-10 and ACC inter-conference games, doesn’t mean that have to turn a blind eye to what’s going on in the rest of the college basketball world.

For instance, this battle tonight between two teams that nobody really knows anything about could produce a huge score for some astute college basketball bettor.

Here are the trends that back-up that assertion:

The Eastern Illinois Panthers are 4 and 0 against the spread in their last 4 games as a road UNDERDOG.

The Eastern Illinois Panthers are 4 and 1 against the spread in their last 5 games overall.

The Austin Peay Governors are 0-5-1 against the spread in their last 6 games versus a team from the Ohio Valley Conference.

The Austin Peay Governors are 0 and 4 against the spread in their last 4 home games.

Make no mistake, the Governors are a better team than the Eastern Illinois Panthers. The Panthers are only 2 and 12 straight-up this year. That’s a pretty bad record. In a lot of those games they have scored less than 50 points.

Austin Peay, meanwhile, is 9 and 6 on the season this year. Perhaps their best performance was a loss versus the undefeated Vanderbilt Commodores. In that game the Governors only lost by 14 points. Not bad considering that the Commodores will no doubt be one of the favorites in the SEC this year.

But I can’t give up sixteen points in a game between two fairly bad teams. Austin Peay, as well as they played versus Vanderbilt, still only put up around 60 to 70 points a game themselves. Now, they face a team in Eastern Illinois that, record aside, play fairly good defense. Eastern Illinois hasn’t given up 80 points once in their past 7 games. They also racked up 85 in their last game, a win versus Harris Stowe.

I wonder if Harris had to play the entire game by himself. Or did he get help from Harriet-Beecher? Okay, that was a bad literary joke.

Anyhow, I have to take the points in this one. I mean, Austin Peay would have to score 76, if the Panthers can rack up at least 60, for the push. I don’t have a lot of faith in them doing that.

The BetUS NCAA basketball betting line is Eastern Illinois Panthers + 16 against the spread on the road versus the Austin Peay Governors.

I like the Panthers to beat this spread.

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