{"id":11453,"date":"2010-12-11T10:07:08","date_gmt":"2010-12-11T15:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11453"},"modified":"2010-12-11T10:07:08","modified_gmt":"2010-12-11T15:07:08","slug":"ncaa-basketball-picks-tennessee-volunteers-vs-pittsburgh-panthers-big-east-sec-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/ncaa-basketball-picks-tennessee-volunteers-vs-pittsburgh-panthers-big-east-sec-preview-11453\/","title":{"rendered":"NCAA Basketball Picks: Tennessee Volunteers vs Pittsburgh Panthers Big East-SEC Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tennessee Volunteers vs Pittsburgh Panthers
\nSaturday, 12\/11\/10, 3:15 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Pittsburgh -8
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Pittsburgh -7.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 141
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 141.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Pitt Panthers opened as eight-point favorites against the Tennessee Volunteers in Saturday's game at the CONSOL Energy Center<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tennessee wasn\u2019t high on going to play the Pitt Panthers in their own backyard, but head coach Bruce Peal scheduled the game without a return contest anyway.\u00a0 \u201cWe had the opportunity to play Marquette in Nashville,\u201d Pearl commented.\u00a0 \u201cAnd there weren\u2019t a lot of volunteers to go up there to Pittsburgh and play Pittsburgh.\u00a0 So we\u2019ll see how it works out.\u201d\u00a0 The program knows that its opponent is the best rebounding team in the nation and many Big East experts have stated that this is one of the deepest units of the Jamie Dixon era.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019re very solid defensively, they\u2019re physical,\u201d Pearl said.\u00a0 \u201cThey\u2019ve got some pride in their physicality.\u201d\u00a0 Tennessee is 4-2 ATS on the year and the college basketball lines page lists them as a solid underdog.<\/p>\n

The Volunteers have relied heavily on their defense during the early going this season, holding opponents to 35.4 percent field-goal shooting and 26.8 percent from beyond the arc.\u00a0 Tennessee is also a team that can hold its own on the boards, carrying a plus-7.2 margin into this contest.\u00a0 An important factor in this contest is the amount of time off the club has had since its last game, with 11 days off by the time it tips off against Pittsburgh on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

Pittsburgh is set to play in its first DirecTV SEC-Big East Invitational when it faced No. 11 Tennessee at the CONSOL Energy Center.\u00a0 The Panthers haven\u2019t played such a high-profile non-conference game in these parts since hosting No. 11 North Carolina in 1995 and Dixon has compared today\u2019s opponent to a then-No. 3 Texas squad that handed his team a 78-62 defeat last year in Kansas City.\u00a0 \u201cI don\u2019t compare teams, but they\u2019re a very good team,\u201d he commented.\u00a0 \u201cThere are a lot of similarities.\u201d\u00a0 Pittsburgh tallied its 10th victory last time out with a 70-42 win over Delaware State on Wednesday.\u00a0 The squad is 3-4 ATS on the year.<\/p>\n

The Panthers will be playing their second game in today\u2019s venue, defeating Duquesne in the arena\u2019s first basketball game on December 1.\u00a0 Pittsburgh has been one of the elite teams in American for quite some time, proving to be the Big East\u2019s leader in overall winning percentage over the last nine years.\u00a0 The team enters today\u2019s game having won six consecutive games against Southeastern Conference opponents since a December 31, 2002 loss at Georgia.<\/p>\n

Bettors will be interested in knowing that the Volunteers are 9-3-1 ATS in non-conference games, while the Panthers are 6-2 ATS as a favorite of 7.0 to 12.5 points.<\/p>\n

The college basketball handicappers at Maddux Sports are ready for a huge day and can\u2019t wait for you to be a part of it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tennessee Volunteers vs Pittsburgh Panthers Saturday, 12\/11\/10, 3:15 PM EDT, TV:\u00a0 ESPN Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Pittsburgh -8 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Pittsburgh -7.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 141 Current Total:\u00a0 141.5 Tennessee wasn\u2019t high on going to play the Pitt Panthers in their own backyard, but head coach Bruce Peal scheduled the game without a return contest anyway.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":9782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[559,15,4016,3734,615,739,469],"class_list":["post-11453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-big-east","tag-bruce-pearl","tag-consol-energy-center","tag-jamie-dixon","tag-pittsburgh-panthers","tag-sec","tag-tennessee-volunteers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453","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=11453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11454,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11453\/revisions\/11454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}