{"id":11331,"date":"2010-12-07T22:53:10","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T03:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11331"},"modified":"2010-12-07T22:53:10","modified_gmt":"2010-12-08T03:53:10","slug":"notre-dame-fighting-irish-vs-kentucky-wildcats-college-basketball-predictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/notre-dame-fighting-irish-vs-kentucky-wildcats-college-basketball-predictions-11331\/","title":{"rendered":"Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs Kentucky Wildcats College Basketball Predictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs Kentucky Wildcats
\nWednesday, 12\/8\/10, 9:30 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Kentucky -6
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Kentucky -5.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 141
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 141.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Kentucky Wildcats are 5.5-point neutral court favorites over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Freedom Hall on Wednesday night<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Notre Dame will make its first-ever appearance in the DirecTV SEC-Big East Invitational on Wednesday night in playing the Kentucky Wildcats at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Kentucky.\u00a0 The Irish start five seniors, all of whom played the last time the two teams met in the 2009 NIT quarterfinals.\u00a0 Notre Dame picked up a 77-67 win in that game, which actually ended the Billy Gillispie-era at Kentucky.\u00a0 This will be the 60th meeting all-time between the two storied schools, with the Irish trailing the series 18-41.\u00a0 The squad will come in with plenty of confidence knowing the program has a five-game winning streak against SEC teams.\u00a0 Earlier this season, the Fighting Irish topped Georgia 89-83 in double-overtime during the first round of the Old Spice Classic in Orlando, Florida.\u00a0 Notre Dame is 11-6 ATS on neutral courts the last three years and is currently an underdog on the college basketball lines page.<\/p>\n

The Fighting Irish are off to a perfect 8-0 start for the fifth time in program history and for the first time since the 1973-74 campaign.\u00a0 With an eight-game win streak to start the season, Notre Dame is 14-2 in its last 16 games dating back to last season.\u00a0 Tonight\u2019s venue has been a \u201cHouse of Horrors\u201d for the program, posting an 11-34 all-time mark inside this particular venue.\u00a0 The last win for an Irish team at Freedom Hall was against Kentucky on December 27, 1980.\u00a0 It\u2019s important for the squad to continue its strong starts, allowing 25.5 points in the first half, while scoring 39.1 points.<\/p>\n

Kentucky has lost two of three heading into tonight\u2019s game and coach John Calipari knows that his team is suffering some growing pains early on.\u00a0 \u201cWe were passive in the loss to North Carolina,\u201d he stated.\u00a0 \u201cThey were the aggressor, we were passive.\u201d\u00a0 The Wildcats are extremely young and lost a ton of talent that vacated Lexington for the NBA after the NCAA tournament.\u00a0 Don\u2019t expect the program to be down long and many anticipate a bounce back performance tonight, as the team has produced a 58-18 record in Freedom Hall and 121-33 mark in Louisville.\u00a0 Kentucky is 31-29 ATS as a favorite the last three years.<\/p>\n

The Wildcats entered the season ranked 337 out of 346 nationally in terms of Division I experience and its shown on the court in the early going.\u00a0 Part of that inexperience showed up in touted freshman Terrence Jones\u2019 performance against the Tar Heels, making just 3 of 17 shots in the 75-73 loss in Chapel Hill.\u00a0 \u201cHe was never emotionally connected to the game, there was no sense of urgency the entire game,\u201d coach Calipari stated after the game.\u00a0 It\u2019s a showing that Jones has jokingly blamed on a nap he took in between the team meal and tipoff.<\/p>\n

Bettors will be interested in knowing that the Fighting Irish are 5-0 ATS versus SEC competition, while the Wildcats are 13-5-1 ATS against the Big East.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on the winning action and let the college basketball handicappers at Maddux Sports work for you.\u00a0 Start joining them today!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs Kentucky Wildcats Wednesday, 12\/8\/10, 9:30 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Kentucky -6 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Kentucky -5.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 141 Current Total:\u00a0 141.5 Notre Dame will make its first-ever appearance in the DirecTV SEC-Big East Invitational on Wednesday night in playing the Kentucky Wildcats at Freedom Hall in […]<\/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":[559,1365,756,876,1311,739,3897],"class_list":["post-11331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-big-east","tag-freedom-hall","tag-john-calipari","tag-kentucky-wildcats","tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","tag-sec","tag-terrence-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11331","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=11331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11332,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11331\/revisions\/11332"}],"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=11331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}