{"id":11934,"date":"2010-12-28T17:33:51","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T22:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=11934"},"modified":"2010-12-28T17:35:33","modified_gmt":"2010-12-28T22:35:33","slug":"college-basketball-betting-preview-a-look-at-minnesota-wisconsin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/college-basketball-betting-preview-a-look-at-minnesota-wisconsin-11934\/","title":{"rendered":"College Basketball Betting Preview: A look at Minnesota-Wisconsin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Minnesota Golden Gophers at Wisconsin Badgers, Kohl Center, Madison, WI<br \/>\nTuesday, December 28, 2010, 7:00 pm Eastern, TV: ESPN2<br \/>\nOpening Line: Wisconsin -8<br \/>\nCurrent Line: Wisconsin -7 1\/2<br \/>\nOpening Total: 127 1\/2<br \/>\nCurrent Line: 125 1\/2<br \/>\nMoney Line: Wisconsin -375 \/ Minnesota +315<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_9801\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9801\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-9801\" src=\"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/jon-leuer-wisconsin-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/jon-leuer-wisconsin-300x168.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/jon-leuer-wisconsin.jpg 495w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9801\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jon Leuer and the Wisconsin Badgers take on the Minnesota Golden Gophers in the Big Ten opener for both teams. The Badgers are 7 1\/2 point favorites at home. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>These two long time rivals open Big Ten play against each other. Minnesota is 11-1 on the season and ranked #13 in the polls. The Gophers have one loss on the season to Virginia 87-79. They have quality wins over North Carolina and West Virginia in tournament in Puerto Rico in November. Wisconsin is 10-2 on the season and ranked #24 in the polls. The Badgers have losses at UNLV and to Notre Dame in a tournament in Orlando Thanksgiving weekend. They have quality wins over Boston College, North Carolina St, and Marquette on the season. Minnesota has won 5 games in a row straight up and Wisconsin is on a 6 game winning streak of their own. Minnesota hasn&#8217;t finished with a winning record in the Big Ten since 2005, but that could change this year. It won&#8217;t be easy in the rugged Big Ten which has 6 teams ranked in the top 25, and three in the top 15. Wisconsin has never lost a conference home opener under coach Bo Ryan. The Badgers are 9-0 but they have lost 3 straight to Minnesota, both straight up and ATS. Two of three meetings have gone under the total. Minnesota is 6-15 ATS in all road games the last three seasons.<\/p>\n<p>The past two seasons Minnesota has gone 21-3 straight up in non-conference play only to go 9-9 in conference play both years. Minnesota definitely wants to improve on that record this season and has a very talented team to do just that.\u00a0 The Gophers are outscoring opponents 77-68 on the season. They are shooting 47.3% from the field and 34.7% from 3 point range. Minnesota struggles at the free throw line converting only 62.4% from the charity stripe. Opponents are shooting only 39.0% from the field against the Gophers. Four Gophers average in double figure scoring led by point guard Blake Hoffarber with 13.9 a game. Hoffarber also leads the team in assists with 5 a game.\u00a0 Forward Trevor Mbakwe scores 13.3 ppg and averages 9.8 rebounds a game to lead the team. Guard Devoe Joseph scores 11.8 a game. Center Ralph Sampson III scores 11.5 ppg and averages 6 rebounds a game. He leads the team in blocks with 2.2 a game. Guard Al golden is a very versatile weapon but he missed 5 games due to injury. he is averaging 9 ppg, 3 rpg, 3.7 apg, and leads the team in steals with 2.7 a game. Minnesota averages 40.9 rebounds a game and has a\u00a0 rebounding margin of +5.7. The Gophers average 18.6 assists and 14.8 turnovers a game. They also average 8.8 steals and 5.8 blocks a game.<\/p>\n<p>Wisconsin is outscoring opponents 72-54 on the year. The Badgers are shooting 45.7% from the field and 38.2% from 3 point range. Wisconsin makes 79.1% of their free throws. Wisconsin is holding opponents to 38.8% shooting from the field. Forward Jon Leuer leads the team in scoring (19.8 ppg), rebounding (7.3 rpg), and blocks (1.8 a game). Point guard Jordan Taylor leads the team in assists with 4.8 a game and also scores 15.4 points a game. The Badgers averages 35.9 rebounds a game and have a rebounding margin of +7.6. They average 15.2 assists a game and only 9.1 turnovers a game.\u00a0 The Badgers average 4.2 steals and 4.3 blocks a game.<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota has the edge in rebounding and depth, but Wisconsin is much better defensively. The disciplined Badgers do not turn the ball over that much. This should be a great game to open the conference slate for both of these teams that hope to play deep into March. The difference could come down to Minnesota&#8217;s inability to make free throws in clutch situations.<\/p>\n<p>Our college basketball handicappers\u00a0 are red hot as conference play begins this week. Don&#8217;t miss out on any more winners!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Minnesota Golden Gophers at Wisconsin Badgers, Kohl Center, Madison, WI Tuesday, December 28, 2010, 7:00 pm Eastern, TV: ESPN2 Opening Line: Wisconsin -8 Current Line: Wisconsin -7 1\/2 Opening Total: 127 1\/2 Current Line: 125 1\/2 Money Line: Wisconsin -375 \/ Minnesota +315 These two long time rivals open Big Ten play against each other. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40249,"featured_media":9801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[737,3887,3631,2024,464,437],"class_list":["post-11934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-big-ten","tag-college-basketball-betting","tag-college-basketball-handicapping","tag-espn2","tag-minnesota-golden-gophers","tag-wisconsin-badgers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11934","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\/40249"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11934"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11940,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11934\/revisions\/11940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}