College Basketball Odds & Best Bets for Saturday's Slate
The Big Ten, Big East and ACC are three conferences that will be featured this Saturday with four games pitting Top 25 teams against one another. Starting the day will be the seventh-ranked Michigan Wolverines (21-2) hosting the 19th-ranked Wisconsin Badgers (17-6) as 5.5-point home favorites on the college basketball odds in a battle for first place in the Big Ten.
The Wolverines currently sit atop the conference standings at 10-2, but the Badgers are right behind them at 9-3 along with the Michigan State Spartans, while the Purdue Boilermakers are 9-2. Michigan will be out to avenge a 64-54 loss at Wisconsin as a 3.5-point road favorite on Jan. 19 for the team's first setback of the season.
However, a better bet in that game might be the UNDER, which has cashed in five of the past six games for the Wolverines and gone 4-1-1 in the past six meetings, according to the OddsShark College Basketball Database.
Later on Saturday, the Big East will take center stage when the 14th-ranked Villanova Wildcats (19-4) visit the 10th-ranked Marquette Golden Eagles (19-4) as one-point road underdogs. The defending national champions have won the past three meetings with Marquette and 12 of the last 13, going 9-4 against the spread in those games.
Those trends plus a perfect 10-0 straight-up mark in conference play make the Wildcats the best bet of the day.
Finally, the ACC has two Top 25 matchups on tap Saturday, with none bigger than the third-ranked Virginia Cavaliers (20-1) hosting the second-ranked Duke Blue Devils (20-2) in another rematch from three weeks ago.
The Cavaliers are listed as consensus two-point home favorites at online sports betting sites this time around after covering the spread as 3.5-point underdogs in a 72-70 loss to the Blue Devils on Jan. 19. Duke has won four of the past five meetings SU but has failed to cover three of the last four in the series.
Before that, the 22nd-ranked Florida State Seminoles (17-5) will go for their fifth win in a row versus the 16th-ranked Louisville Cardinals (17-6). The Seminoles are 2.5-point home favorites and started ACC play at 1-4 but are over the .500 mark thanks to a four-game winning streak, capped by an 80-62 rout of the Syracuse Orange on Tuesday.
The Cardinals are 7-1 SU in their last eight games and 5-1 ATS in the past six meetings.
