{"id":11763,"date":"2010-12-21T20:40:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-22T01:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11763"},"modified":"2010-12-21T20:40:13","modified_gmt":"2010-12-22T01:40:13","slug":"ncaa-mens-basketball-picks-southern-utah-at-uc-davis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/ncaa-mens-basketball-picks-southern-utah-at-uc-davis-11763\/","title":{"rendered":"NCAA Men’s Basketball Picks: Southern Utah at UC Davis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Southern Utah at UC Davis
\nDecember 21st, 2010 at 10:00 PM EST
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 UC Davis -8.5
\nCurrent Line: UC Davis -8.5
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 129
\nCurrent Total: 129
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 UC Davis -450 \/ Southern Utah +350
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 UC Davis -446 \/ Southern Utah +379<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
UC Davis is favored by 8.5 points tonight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tonight’s game brings together the UC Davis Aggies (4-7), the conference leader of the Big West against the 3-8 Southern Utah Thunderbirds, who are 7th in the Summit League.\u00a0 College basketball oddsmakers have set the line in favor of the Aggies, who despite their losing record, have an even point differential; they score and give up 65.7.\u00a0 Southern Utah’s differential is -7.9 as they score 62.3 and give up 70.2.\u00a0 College basketball handicappers have set the total at 129, which is 2 points higher than the collective averages of the two teams.<\/p>\n

UC Davis is 4-8 over their past 12 games, but has won 11 of their past 16 home games and Southern Utah is 1-5 on the road this year.\u00a0 Southern Utah is 0-3 ATS this year and UC Davis is 3-3 ATS this year.\u00a0 Neither team has any injuries of note, so they both come in full strength for this matchup.<\/p>\n

UC Davis is led by the tandem of Joe Harden and Mark Payne, who account for 40% of the Aggies total points this year and are the only two players to average more than 30 minutes a game on the team.\u00a0 Harden, a 6’8″ senior guard, is averaging 14.8 points per game and is shooting 47.1% from the floor.\u00a0 He had a big 27 point game on December 1st against California, but the Aggies still lost by 12 points.\u00a0 He has scored in double figures in all but 2 of their games so far this year.\u00a0 He’s not a particularly strong shooter from deep, but with his size and strength, he is able to take other guards in the post and punish them down low.\u00a0 Mark Payne is also a big guard, 6’8″ 205, and he is the second leading scorer on the Aggies with 12.8 points per game.\u00a0 He scored 20 in the season opener against FAU and has played 25 or more minutes in every game so far this year.\u00a0 Like Harden, he’s not much of a threat from outside, and does most of his scoring in the paint against the smaller guards he faces.<\/p>\n

If any team has a balanced attack, it is Southern Utah.\u00a0 They have a 8 player rotation in which every player averages 5 or more and no one averages more than 10.\u00a0 Their leading scorer Ray Jones, Jr. averages 10.8 points per game and plays a team high 34.2 minutes a night.\u00a0 No other Southern Utah player plays more than 25 minutes a game.\u00a0 Jones is a 6’2″ junior guard and he also leads the team in assists with 4.4 a game.\u00a0 He scored 22 in the season opening loss to California Baptist, but has not scored more than 16 in any other game.\u00a0 Calling him the focal point of the offense would be a true but somewhat misleading statement, as though the offense does run through him, many other Southern Utah players play significant roles in their point production.<\/p>\n

Southern Utah will work to tire out the UC Davis starters as they have more depth to go to on their team.\u00a0 UC Davis has the more talented players, but sometimes depth wins out.\u00a0 UC Davis’ relative dominance at home is the reason college basketball oddsmakers have set the line in their favor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Southern Utah at UC Davis December 21st, 2010 at 10:00 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 UC Davis -8.5 Current Line: UC Davis -8.5 Opening Total:\u00a0 129 Current Total: 129 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 UC Davis -450 \/ Southern Utah +350 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 UC Davis -446 \/ Southern Utah +379 Tonight’s game brings together the UC Davis Aggies (4-7), […]<\/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":[4224,4223],"class_list":["post-11763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-southern-utah","tag-uc-davis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763","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=11763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11764,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763\/revisions\/11764"}],"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=11763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}