College Basketball Best Bets: ETSU Can Surprise in the Bayou

Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

College basketball experts Three Man Weave and SI Gambling Producer Max Meyer are back with their three best bets for Wednesday's slate. For these bets, we're using the current odds from William Hill (as of 10:33 a.m. EST).

Eastern Tennessee State at LSU
3MW Pick: ETSU +10.5

Grab a bowl of gumbo, start hunting for alligators and give Coach O a call—we’re heading down to the Bayou for this one!

Will Wade is no Ed Orgeron (in many, many ways), but he has built an annual hoops contender in Baton Rouge, and despite the pro departures of Tremont Waters and Naz Reid, this year’s version is again threatening to be atop the SEC. ETSU is no slouch either, though, and Steve Forbes’s squad returned nearly every relevant rotation member from a top-100 KenPom team a year ago.

These two teams are actually built pretty similarly: a prolific offense centered around hyper-efficient shot-making and attacking the offensive glass, paired with a good-but-not-great defense that wants to disrupt the opposition’s ball movement. Ordinarily in that situation, it’d be easy to side with the high-major team—the players are likely just better at what both teams want to do. I don’t think the gap is all that wide here, though.

The heart of LSU’s lethal offense has been its pair of sophomore forwards, Darius Days and Emmitt Williams. Days leads the entire country in offensive rating, dominating his competition and making a thoroughly absurd 85% of his shots inside the arc. ETSU can answer with Jeromy Rodriguez and Bo Hodges, though, two impressive athletes who can come close to matching Days and Williams, both in terms of physical ability and constant motor. If those two (and seven-footer Lucas N’Guessan) can somewhat neutralize the LSU rim assault, ETSU should be able to score on the shaky Tiger defense.

LSU is most vulnerable from the perimeter, as Wade’s system is more focused on taking away easy shots in the paint than running opponents off the three-point line. The beauty of ETSU’s roster is that it can score in multiple ways: the frontcourt has finishers in N’Guessan and Rodriguez, and Bo Hodges is a freight train driving toward the rim, but the Bucs also have knockdown shooters in Patrick Good, Tray Boyd and Daivien Williamson. All three of those guys can explode in an instant, and LSU has shown a propensity for losing shooters in the past—just read through the play-by-play of the second half against Utah State if you need proof.

Speaking of past games, ETSU should have no issue entering a hostile road environment against a power conference foe, considering the Buccaneers have already proven they can hang tough at Kansas. The Bucs were down just 61-56 with six minutes left in Allen Fieldhouse, and with apologies to LSU and the Maravich Assembly Center, Kansas is a whole different beast. Notably from that box score, ETSU even outrebounded the Jayhawks’ colossal frontcourt 33-32, so competing with LSU’s bigs isn’t a crazy concept whatsoever.

The Bucs entered this season with feeble but realistic at-large hopes, and this is the last chance to give those hopes a true jolt of life. The Buccaneers are fully capable of winning this one outright, but ultimately, all we need is for them to get close.

Oakland at Syracuse
3MW Pick: Syracuse -13

"They're usually really big and pack it in and play a zone. Who's going to shoot the ball for us? That's not a game I'm looking forward to."

That’s Oakland head coach Greg Kampe discussing his team’s outlook tonight against Syracuse. Not exactly a resounding vote of confidence is it…

Kampe’s postgame pressers are always gold. His quotes are overflowing with candidness and brutal honesty, often times pointed at the hard truth of the state of his team. For us degenerate gamblers of the world, hearing a clip of this particular soundbite is like receiving an insider trading tip that Enron’s about to be engulfed in a global accounting scandal.

There’s no nuance in what Kampe’s concerned about this evening. Quite simply, the 2019-20 Grizzlies are an outcast compared to the offensive-minded, perimeter-oriented squads he’s compiled in recent years. This offseason, the roster was demolished by transfers, forcing him to patch together a makeshift rotation around what little of last year’s nucleus remained. Starting forward incumbents Xavier Hill-Mais and Brad Bretching stayed loyal to Kampe, but the guard and wing cupboards were restocked with fresh new faces. Unfortunately, not one member among this wave of newcomers is an adept shooter, which has forced Kampe to toss his typical stylistic playbook out the window. The offense, which now operates at a snail’s pace, runs almost exclusively through Xavier Hill-Mais, who usually commands double teams against Horizon level competition. Syracuse’s collection of long-limbed athletes is multiple weight classes above Horizon-caliber defenders, which is made all the more difficult by the 2-3 zone wrinkle.

Defensively, Kampe’s interior-centric mindset still holds. The Grizzlies are adamant about walling off the lane to drivers and cutters, but this comes at the expense of delayed closeouts to shooters on the perimeter. Against most Syracuse versions, forcing the Orange to launch it from deep would be a wise decision—but Oakland isn’t the only team tonight dealing with an identity crisis. Elijah Hughes, Joseph Girard and Buddy Boeheim form a lethal triumvirate of long-range snipers, potent enough to bury Oakland’s shell defense with a barrage of threes.

Kampe wore the face of a tired and weary traveler in that Michigan State postgame presser. Oakland hasn’t played a home game since Nov. 18, as tonight’s tilt marks the last leg of a six-game road trip before returning to the Motor City proper this Saturday. The Griz are a resilient bunch—they take after their head coach in this regard—but intangibles don’t make jump shots. The cavernous dome and the obstructing 2-3 zone are designed to suck the soul out of opposing shooters, which the Grizzlies have few of in the first place. Tonight, in upstate New York, the color of money is orange.

St. Mary's vs. Arizona State (at Talking Stick Resort Arena in Phoenix)
Meyer's Pick: Arizona State +2.5

We cashed yesterday going with a 2.5-point underdog on a “neutral,” so let’s dip back into the well, shall we?

When you think of Arizona State under Bobby Hurley, an offensive-minded, up-tempo team is what comes to mind. With this season’s team, only part of that is the case. The Sun Devils still rank 34th in adjusted tempo, however it’s been the defense (43rd in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency) that has shined early on.

“I think it’s our pressure, our guards and using our speed and athleticism on the perimeter,” Hurley said when asked about the reasoning behind ASU’s 8-2 start. “Jaelen House and Remy Martin are the catalysts.”

Martin (2.3) and House (2.2) are first and second among all Pac-12 players in steals per game. Both Martin and House are jitterbugs on the floor, and their infectious energy up top is what the rest of the team builds off of.

Besides forcing turnovers, ASU has done an excellent job this season defending threes, as the Sun Devils rank 84th in opponent three-point attempt rate and 13th in opponent three-point percentage (teams are making just 26.5% of threes vs. ASU). This is extremely critical going up against human flamethrower Jordan Ford, who has limitless range and is one of the most dangerous shooters in the country.

St. Mary’s as a team is first in three-point shooting (43.8%) and 30th in turnover percentage on offense (16.4), so this will be a fascinating battle of strength on strength. But I’ve been impressed this month with how ASU has ramped it up against stronger offenses. Last game, the Sun Devils held freshman star Anthony Edwards to just 13 points on 12 shots and Georgia (54th in adjusted offensive efficiency) to 2/24 shooting from three in a 79-59 win. On the road at a tough San Francisco team, ASU held the Dons (41st in adjusted offensive efficiency, 55th in 3P%) to just 0.91 points per possession in a 71-67 triumph, and they only shot 8/28 from three.

Martin leads the way on offense, but ASU has improved on that end of late because of the emergence of Alonzo Verge. The JUCO transfer got off to a slow start, which wasn’t helped by a wrist injury that caused him to miss three games. Now, he’s healthy and adjusting to the uptick in competition, scoring 36 points in the past two games. Martin, Verge, House and sharpshooter Rob Edwards provide a formidable group of guards that can beat you in many different ways. The Sun Devils also have an athletic double-double machine Romello White (12.7 PPG, 10.8 RPG), and he can certainly help neutralize Saint Mary’s big Malik Fitts.

I just envision a game where St. Mary’s doesn’t have its usual outside shooting success because of ASU hounding the perimeter. The Sun Devils have also improved on the offensive end of late, and I think they’re an underrated team in the market. I’ll gladly take the points in Phoenix.

Season Record: 18-16