NCAA March Madness: Best bets for Wednesday's First Four gameThe 2023 NCAA tournament is finally here! On Wednesday night, we have First Four matchups between 16 seeds Texas Southern and Fairleigh Dickinson, and 11 seeds Arizona State and Nevada. Here are our best bets for the NCAA tournament's second night of First Four games.
No. 16 Texas Southern (-2.5, 146.5) vs. No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson
Adam Burke: Texas Southern badly underperformed during the regular season. Head coach Johnny Jones is back in the NCAA Tournament after taking his team to the Big Dance as a 16 seed last season. The Tigers won in Dayton over Texas A&M Corpus Christi to move on into the first round, where Kansas won 83-56.
There’s something to be said about having played in Dayton before and going through that pressure cooker. Texas Southern just did it last season with senior John Walker III leading the way and others like PJ Henry and Joirdon Karl Nicholas, who are also on this year’s roster. This is a much younger Texas Southern team with a lot of freshmen involved, so it makes sense that there were some growing pains.