Louisville Cardinals vs. West Virginia Mountaineers
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College basketball betting on Saturday afternoon heads to Morgantown, WV where the West Virginia Mountaineers (16-3, 7-11 ATS) will put their #9 ranking on the line at home against the Louisville Cardinals (13-7, 5-10 ATS). WVU knows that it is going to the NCAA Tournament barring an epic collapse down the stretch, but it will still look to build on its three-game winning streak going forward. The Cardinals are a different story though; HC Rick Pitino’s team may really be on the outside looking in right now. They snapped a three-game skid in conference play with a 68-60 win against Cincinnati, but that win didn’t make their NCAA basketball gambling fans any happier. Louisville has failed to cover every game it has played since January 6th (0-5 ATS).

Louisville’s offense isn’t its problem. The unit is scoring 80.0 points per game and is flying up and down the court against some of the better defensive teams in the Big East. However, even though the Cards put up 77 points against Seton Hall, 77 against Pittsburgh, and 84 against Villanova over the L/3 weeks, they still went 0-3 SU and ATS in those games. The magic number seems to be 70 points for the defense. When opposing teams surpass that number, they’re 6-2 SU against Louisville. The Ville only has one loss to its credit when holding opponents to 70 or fewer.

West Virginia may become the second team to hand the Cards a loss by scoring less than 70 points in a game this year. The Mountaineers are used to playing low scoring games even though they are averaging 73.5 points per game this season. They’ve only scored more than 71 points twice in conference play, and those games were against teams that are defensive sieves (Seton Hall & Rutgers). Scoring against this team is virtually impossible when it locks in that patented zone ‘D’. The ‘Neers are holding teams to just 61.5 points per game and have kept their L/3 opponents to an average of just 57.0 PPG.

Since the Cards moved to the Big East, they’ve had great success against WVU. Their only loss in this series SU came back in 2006 at Morgantown 68-64. In last season’s Big East Tournament, Louisville knocked off the Mountaineers 62-59 to complete a season sweep (it won 69-63 at Freedom Hall on January 31st).

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