{"id":13477,"date":"2011-02-19T03:34:29","date_gmt":"2011-02-19T08:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=13477"},"modified":"2011-02-19T10:59:53","modified_gmt":"2011-02-19T15:59:53","slug":"saturday-big-east-basketball-tv-picks-pittsburgh-at-st-johns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/saturday-big-east-basketball-tv-picks-pittsburgh-at-st-johns-13477\/","title":{"rendered":"Saturday Big East Basketball TV Picks: Pittsburgh at St. John’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pittsburgh Panthers at St. John’s Red Storm, Madison Square Garden, New York, NY
\nSaturday, February 19, 2011, 12:00 pm Eastern, TV: ESPN
\nOpening Line: Pitt -3
\nCurrent Line: Pitt -3.5
\nOpening Total: 134
\nCurrent Total: 135
\nMoney Line: Pitt -165 \/ St. John’s +145
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"St.
Pitt's Ashton Gibbs is expected to return to action after missing three games with an MCL injury<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The fourth-ranked Pittsburgh Panthers (24-2,12-1 Big East) are expected to have leading scorer Ashton Gibbs back in the lineup on Saturday when they visit the St. John\u2019s Red Storm (16-9, 8-5) at Madison Square Garden.\u00a0 The Panthers (-3.5) will bring their perfect 6-0 road record into MSG along with Gibbs, who has missed the last three games with a strained MCL injury.<\/p>\n

Pitt was able to go 3-0 without Gibbs, including impressive road wins at West Virginia (71-66) and Villanova (57-54) before topping South Florida 67-55 at home on Wednesday.\u00a0 The Panthers surprisingly struggled at times against the Bulls but went on a 14-2 run to pull away in the second half.\u00a0 Brad Wanamaker and Nasir Robinson each scored 13 points to lead the team.<\/p>\n

St. John\u2019s will present an interesting challenge for Pittsburgh as a team that has gone 4-5 against Top 25 teams this season but beaten three Top 10 teams at the Garden.\u00a0 None of those statement wins against Notre Dame, Duke and Connecticut were even close, with the Red Storm beating them by an average of nearly 17 points.\u00a0 In fact, they are playing arguably their best basketball of the season with their second three-game winning streak in conference play.<\/p>\n

The team has won five of six games overall since losing three in a row, starting with a huge 93-78 victory against the Blue Devils.\u00a0 St. John\u2019s is riding a four-game winning streak against Big East opponents, including two straight on the road at Cincinnati (59-57) and Marquette (80-68).\u00a0 The Red Storm have covered their last three games but have not beaten Pittsburgh since 2006.<\/p>\n

The Panthers have won the last five meetings with St. John\u2019s both straight-up and against the spread, and they are also riding a five-game winning streak overall.\u00a0 Their only loss in the last 15 games came at home with the Fighting Irish pulling off a 56-51 upset on January 24 as 10.5-point underdogs.\u00a0 Pitt has covered four of its last five road games since beating Providence 83-79 in its first league game away from home back on January 4.\u00a0 The UNDER is 4-1 in those games.<\/p>\n

The Red Storm will be playing at home for just the second time in five games and have won their last three games SU as underdogs.\u00a0 Dwight Hardy is peaking at the right time for St. John\u2019s and might be able to take advantage of Gibbs in his return.\u00a0 Hardy is averaging almost 28 points in the last four games following a 28-point effort against the Golden Eagles on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Now that you have read this Big East college basketball betting preview featuring St. John’s & Pittsburgh, check out the NCAA basketball odds on this and all the games to compare the best lines at multiple sportsbooks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pittsburgh Panthers at St. John’s Red Storm, Madison Square Garden, New York, NY Saturday, February 19, 2011, 12:00 pm Eastern, TV: ESPN Opening Line: Pitt -3 Current Line: Pitt -3.5 Opening Total: 134 Current Total: 135 Money Line: Pitt -165 \/ St. John’s +145 The fourth-ranked Pittsburgh Panthers (24-2,12-1 Big East) are expected to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":9797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[4319,4381,3887,4316,4317,4318,615,4510,4205],"class_list":["post-13477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-big-east-basketball","tag-big-east-picks","tag-college-basketball-betting","tag-free-college-basketball-pick","tag-ncaa-basketball-odds","tag-ncaa-hoops-picks","tag-pittsburgh-panthers","tag-st-johns-pittsburgh-preview","tag-st-johns-red-storm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13477","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\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13477"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13485,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13477\/revisions\/13485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}