{"id":10782,"date":"2010-11-19T15:28:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T20:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=10782"},"modified":"2010-11-19T15:28:16","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T20:28:16","slug":"kentucky-wildcats-vs-portland-pilots-ncaa-basketball-picks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/kentucky-wildcats-vs-portland-pilots-ncaa-basketball-picks-10782\/","title":{"rendered":"Kentucky Wildcats vs Portland Pilots NCAA Basketball Picks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kentucky Wildcats vs Portland Pilots
\nFriday, 11\/19\/10, 10:30 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPNU
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Kentucky -6.5
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Kentucky -6.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 143
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 144
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Kentucky -275 \/ Portland +235<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Kentucky brings a 5-1 overall record against the West Coast Conference into tonight's game against the Portland Pilots at the Rose Garden<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kentucky heads out the road after a season-opening 88-65 win against East Tennessee State, traveling to the Pacific Northwest to take on the Portland Pilots.\u00a0 The game will serve as a homecoming of sorts for freshman Terrence Jones, who plays on hanging out with his mother and his grandmother.\u00a0 \u201cI told him that I have never had a player go home and play well, so good luck,\u201d said head coach John Calipari with a bit of sarcasm.\u00a0 He became the first Wildcat freshman to post a double-double in his debut since the 1998-99 season.\u00a0 Ironically enough, this will be Kentucky\u2019s first game in the state of Oregon.\u00a0 The team is 18-11 ATS in non-conference games the past three years and the NCAA basketball lines page has them listed as a road favorite.<\/p>\n

The Wildcats were picked to finish second in the SEC East by media members and won their only meeting with Portland, defeating the Pilots 88-71 in the 1989-90 season.\u00a0 Kentucky has compiled a 5-1 record against schools comprising of the West Coast Conference, playing six different teams during that time.\u00a0 The only loss to the conference came to San Diego in the 2007-08 season.\u00a0 Calipari will definitely try to have his success rub off on this young team, as he\u2019s the winning coach in the nation over the past five years, with a 173-17 record.<\/p>\n

Portland is set to host the No. 12 Kentucky Wildcats in the Rose Garden tonight and won all three games of the AIA Classic last weekend.\u00a0 The team was led by Luke Sikma, who was named the tournament MVP and also was the WCC Co-Player of the Week.\u00a0 He was joined on the All-Tournament team by teammates Jared Stohl and Tanner Riley.\u00a0 Due to their efforts in the tournament, Portland received one vote in this weeks\u2019 Associated Press Top 25 Poll, which is a similar path to the team cracking the poll last year for the first time in 50 years with a 5-0 start.\u00a0 The team is 3-0 ATS on the year and will be facing an SEC opponent for the first time in a lined contest.<\/p>\n

The Pilots will be hosting a game at the Rose Garden for the second time, losing by a 97-64 margin to Duke on December 19, 2000.\u00a0 Portland will need a big game from Stohl to possibly pull off a stunning upset, as he led the nation in three-point percentage last season, hitting 47.8 percent of his shots beyond the arc.\u00a0 He is already the school\u2019s all-time leader in three-pointers made (257).<\/p>\n

Bettors will find that the Wildcats are 35-16-2 ATS in their last 53 games as a road favorite, while the Pilots are 7-1-1 ATS on Fridays.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on a huge weekend and let the college basketball handicappers at Maddux Sports deliver you to the winner\u2019s circle!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kentucky Wildcats vs Portland Pilots Friday, 11\/19\/10, 10:30 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPNU Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Kentucky -6.5 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Kentucky -6.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 143 Current Total:\u00a0 144 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Kentucky -275 \/ Portland +235 Kentucky heads out the road after a season-opening 88-65 win against East Tennessee State, traveling to the Pacific Northwest to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":9767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[3923,756,876,3924,3922,3914,739,3897,3888],"class_list":["post-10782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-jared-stohl","tag-john-calipari","tag-kentucky-wildcats","tag-luke-sikma","tag-portland-pilots","tag-rose-garden","tag-sec","tag-terrence-jones","tag-west-coast-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10783,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10782\/revisions\/10783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}