{"id":11758,"date":"2010-12-21T19:30:17","date_gmt":"2010-12-22T00:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11758"},"modified":"2010-12-21T19:30:17","modified_gmt":"2010-12-22T00:30:17","slug":"ohio-valley-conference-battle-murray-state-racers-at-tennessee-martin-skyhawks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/ohio-valley-conference-battle-murray-state-racers-at-tennessee-martin-skyhawks-11758\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohio Valley Conference Battle: Murray State Racers at Tennessee-Martin Skyhawks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Murray State Racers at Tennessee-Martin Skyhawks
\nDecember 21st, 2010 at 8:00 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 Murray State -12
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 Murray State -13
\nCurrent Total: 136.5
\nOpening Moneyline: Murray State -700 \/ Tenn. Martin +550
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Murray State -800 \/ Tenn. Martin +600<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Murray State is heavily favored for tonight's contest<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tonight’s game brings together the Racers of Murray State, who sport a 7-4 record against the Skyhawks of Tennessee-Martin who are 4-7.\u00a0 College basketball oddsmakers have set the spread heavily in Murray State’s favor.\u00a0 Murray State is currently 5th in the Ohio Valley conference and Tennessee Martin is 9th in the conference.\u00a0 Murray State has won the last three meetings between these teams, and won the last one by a score of 77-45, so it’s easy to see why college basketball betting picks have the spread set in double digits.\u00a0 In fact, in the past three games between the teams, Murray State has won by an average of 27 points.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:\u00a0 Murray State is 1-4 ATS in their last four road games.\u00a0 They are 13-6 in their last 19 road games and the total has gone UNDER in 6 of Murray State’s past 9 games on the road.\u00a0 They have won 8 of their last 9 games against Tennessee Martin at T-M.<\/p>\n

Tennessee Martin has won only 2 of their past 9 games and they are 4-2 at home in their past 6 home games.\u00a0 They are 1-7 ATS in their last 8 against Murray State.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 4 of Tennessee Martin’s last 5 games when playing Murray State.<\/p>\n

Murray State has a balanced scoring attack, with 4 players scoring 8 or more a game, but no one scoring more than 13.\u00a0 6’0″ sophomore shooting guard Isaiah Canaan<\/strong> leads Murray State in scoring with 12.6 points per game.\u00a0 He is shooting 42.3% from behind the arc (22 of 52)\u00a0 and 45.3% from the floor, both down from last year when he shot 48.2% from three and 49.8% from the floor.\u00a0 He has the speed and quickness to get to the basket, but will also shoot a lot of outside shots.\u00a0 He hasn’t had any real big games this year, but scored 19 last game against Western Kentucky, hitting 6 of his 9 field goal attempts and going 2 of 3 from the line.\u00a0 6’0″ senior B.J. Jenkins<\/strong> runs the point for Murray State, giving them a very diminutive but high scoring back court.\u00a0 Jenkins averages 10.2 points a game to go with his 4.1 assists per night.\u00a0 He’s shooting 37.2% from three and 40.8% from the floor.\u00a0 He began his career at Liberty, but transferred to Murray State in 2009 and has been playing better ball since making the transfer.\u00a0 He has scored in double figures in 6 of Murray State’s 11 games and should have a decent game tonight.<\/p>\n

Tennessee Martin has three good players on their team:\u00a0 Reuben Clayton<\/strong>, Mike Liabo<\/strong>, and Benzor Simmons<\/strong>.\u00a0 All three average between 12.3 points per game and 12.9 and play in the 20s for minutes as Tennessee Martin goes with a 10 man rotation.\u00a0 6’3″ senior guard Reuben Clayton leads the way with 12.9 points per game and he is shooting 39.3% from downtown (11 of 28).\u00a0 He’s already had 4 games with 19 points or more, so he is capable of big nights.\u00a0 He’ll be checked by B.J. Jenkins,<\/strong> so he has a size advantage and could use that to his advantage if Tennessee Martin chooses to run a couple post sets for him.\u00a0 6’9″ forward Ron Spencer <\/strong>does a good job of protecting the paint for the Skyhawks, and despite playing only 16 minutes a game, averages 2 blocks and 5 boards per game.\u00a0 He’ll patrol the paint and keep Murray State from penetrating while he is in.\u00a0 If he played more minutes, the Skyhawks would probably be a much better defensive team, but he is only a sophomore so maybe that will change in time.<\/p>\n

Given Murray State’s success on the road college basketball oddsmakers have set the line heavily in their advantage, but Tennessee Martin has the depth to throw at them to make this a good game.\u00a0 The spread has only changed further in Murray State’s advantage since betting opened, so bettors are favoring Murray State, as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Murray State Racers at Tennessee-Martin Skyhawks December 21st, 2010 at 8:00 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 Murray State -12 Current Line:\u00a0 Murray State -13 Current Total: 136.5 Opening Moneyline: Murray State -700 \/ Tenn. Martin +550 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Murray State -800 \/ Tenn. Martin +600 Tonight’s game brings together the Racers of Murray State, who sport […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":3962,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[4219,4220],"class_list":["post-11758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-murray-state","tag-tennessee-martin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11758","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\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11758"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11759,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11758\/revisions\/11759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}