Three more NCAA Tournament tickets are punched today, and we offer our top college basketball player props and best bets for Wednesday based on the best college basketball odds.
Today is one of the busiest days of college basketball's conference tournament schedule, as several leagues play their opening round games (which in some cases are also quarterfinal games) such as the AAC, Big East, Big Ten, Big West, MEAC, Mountain West, Pac-12, SEC, SWAC, and WAC.
Elsewhere, three more automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament will be punched after the outcomes of the championship games in the Big Sky, Patriot League, and Southland Conference are decided.
To accompany our college basketball conference tournament predictions, here are our college basketball player props and best bets for Wednesday (college basketball picks based on odds via our best March Madness betting si tes; pick confidence based on a 1-to-5-star scale).
Wednesday's college basketball best bets
- K.J. Adams Jr. Over 12.5 points vs. Cincinnati (+100 via bet365) ????
- Rytis Petraitis Over 0.5 3-pointers vs. New Mexico (-135 via DraftKings) ????
- Lehigh +7 vs. Colgate (-112 via DraftKings) ???
- Vanderbilt +6.5 vs. Arkansas (-115 via BetMGM) ????
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Wednesday's college basketball player props
Forward K.J. Adams Jr., is Kansas's third-leading scorer at 12.1 points per game, but he is the team's top scorer among those who are healthy, as Kevin McCullar and Hunter Dickinson will be held out of the entire Big 12 Tournament. Thus, it may be a shorter stay than usual for the Jayhawks, but we expect Adams to help fill the scoring void as long as Kansas is alive.
In the five games that McCullar has missed this year, Adams has averaged 12.2 points per game, and gone over this projected total three times. That was with a healthy Dickinson as well, and while some will argue that Adams will draw more defensive attention without his frontcourt mate, we prefer to predict that head coach Bill Self will call Adams' number a lot more given his preference for an inside-outside scoring attack.
DraftKings lowered its odds for the Over on Adams' points from +105 to +100 overnight, which now aligns with bet365's price for the same wager.
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Air Force attempts 3-pointers at the 19th-highest rate nationally and makes the second-highest percentage of 3-pointers (36.8%) of any team in Mountain West play. The Falcons are big underdogs in this game against New Mexico, but that likely means they will be firing away more oft en from deep in a game they project to be trailing. And it is not like the Lobos lock down on the perimeter, as they rank fifth in 3-point percentage allowed to conference opponents.
Air Force has two players, Ethan Taylor and Beau Becker, whose odds at DraftKings to make multiple 3-pointers are a much steeper -180 and -190, respectively. Thus, we find much better value with Petraitis to make a single 3-pointer, even though he is 0-for-6 from beyond the arc in his last three games. However, New Mexico is a much better matchup for him, as he went 4-for-8 from 3-point range in the two regular season games against the Lobos, as they are seemingly uncomfortable extending on the perimeter against the 6-foot-7 big man.
DraftKings and bet365 offer the same -135 price for Petraitis to make at least one 3-pointer, and this play still has value down to -150.
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Wednesday's college basketball game picks
Lehigh's second-leading scorer, Keith Higgins Jr. (12.8 points per game) missed nine games between January and early February, and the Mountain Hawks struggled to a 3-6 record in that span, killing any chance they had of earning a top seed in this tournament. Since Higgins' return on Feb. 10, Lehigh is 7-2, with its two losses coming by a combined five points against the top two teams in the Patriot League, Colgate and Boston University.
Lehigh already avenged one of those losses with a comeback from 21 points down in the semifinals against BU. It now gets another crack at Colgate after losing both regular season meetings by three points apiece. While its on-ball defense and rim protection seemed like concerns when facing the Raiders entering the season, Colgate has scored just 0.88 and 0.93 points per possession, respectively, through the first two matchups.
< p class=''>The fact that Colgate has won this title four times in the past five years and has experienced players on this stage in Braeden Smith, Keegan Records, and Ryan Moffatt. That has already been baked into this spread; however, this is too many points to give a pesky Lehigh squad that is 14-4 ATS in road games this season and has covered eight of nine games as a road underdog.
This number has gone down from +8 at several of our best sports betting sites overnight, and DraftKings is the only one left still offering +7, while all other competitors are a half-point lower at +6.5.
If we could no longer grab a +7 anywhere, we would pass on this play instead of backing Lehigh at +6.5.
Vanderbilt and Arkansas are both coming off surprising results on the last day of the regular season, as the Commodores upset Florida at home, while Arkansas gave Alabama all it could handle in a four-point overtim e road loss. Both teams can build off those performances and bring momentum into the SEC Tournament, but we are backing Vanderbilt as a live underdog. Playing these games in Nashville should give it more of a home-court advantage than a neutral site feel.
The Commodores beat the Razorbacks at Bud Walton Arena 85-82 in the only regular season meeting between these teams, as they overcame a poor 4-for-16 shooting performance from 3-point range by winning the rebounding and turnover battles. Vanderbilt played “bully ball” offensively, shot a blistering 61% inside the arc, and had three players finish with 19-plus points.
We do not expect the threes to suddenly start falling for a Commodores team that made an SEC-worst 26.8% of 3-point attempts in league play. However, Vanderbilt is equipped to negate Arkansas's biggest strength offensively, as it allows free throws at the second-lowest rate in the SEC. Arkansas relies on a 44.6% free t hrow rate and is second nationally with 25.6% of its points coming from the charity stripe.
This is a four-star fade of an Arkansas team that is 12-19 ATS this season and has failed to cover any of its previous five games at neutral sites. The -115 juice at BetMGM is justified, considering FanDuel is on the low end of this spread at +5.5.
We would play this down to +6 but would pass on any spread that reached +5.5 or lower.
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College basketball best bets made Wednesday at 6:48 a.m. ET
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