{"id":19503,"date":"2011-11-19T09:38:27","date_gmt":"2011-11-19T14:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=19503"},"modified":"2011-11-19T09:38:27","modified_gmt":"2011-11-19T14:38:27","slug":"college-basketball-picks-louisville-cardinals-vs-butler-bulldogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/college-basketball-picks-louisville-cardinals-vs-butler-bulldogs-19503\/","title":{"rendered":"College Basketball Picks: Louisville Cardinals vs. Butler Bulldogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

No. 7 Louisville Cardinals at Butler Bulldogs
\nSaturday, 11\/19\/11, 2:00 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 ESPN3
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 Louisville -3
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 Louisville -4
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 129.5
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 129.5
\nOdds Courtesy of Bookmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Louisville<\/a>
The Louisville Cardinals are slight road favorites against the Butler Bulldogs Saturday<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Louisville is set to play its first road of the season and comes in with a perfect 2-0 record\u00a0 that includes a 68-48 win over Lamar, holding the school to a first-half shooting percentage of .182.\u00a0 The Cardinals will be the highest-ranked opponent to visit the Butler Bulldogs since No. 5 North Carolina came in 1992.\u00a0 \u201cWe really are excited,\u201d stated Cardinals head coach Rick Pitino.\u00a0 \u201cWhen you go to places like this fieldhouse, there\u2019s a lot of nostalgia to it.\u00a0 Louisville is 10-11 ATS on the road the last two-plus seasons.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals tallied an 88-73 victory in last year\u2019s meeting that was the first game at the KFC Yum! Center.\u00a0 Louisville is getting major production out of a true freshman already, as forward Chane Behanan is the first known player in school history to produce double-doubles in his first two career games.\u00a0 Junior guard Peyton Siva will not be in the lineup today as the team\u2019s playmaker, sitting out with a severely sprained ankle.\u00a0 It\u2019s a big loss when considering that the program already lost guard Mike Marra for the entire 2011-12 campaign.<\/p>\n

Butler continues its four-game home stand that started with a 57-46 win over Chattanooga, but the program has already suffered a loss, falling 80-77 in an overtime contest to Evansville as 3.5-point favorites.\u00a0 The Bulldogs currently own a five-game homecourt winning streak and are 57-5 inside Hinkle Fieldhouse under the direction of head coach Brad Stevens.\u00a0 The program has won 15 of 16 non-league affairs inside the venue that past three years.\u00a0 Butler is 11-16 ATS at home the past two-plus seasons, while the \u2018over\u2019 is 15-12 in those contests.<\/p>\n

The Bulldogs have played just two nationally-ranked opponents at home during the Stevens\u2019 era, posting a 1-1 record in those contests.\u00a0 Butler is led offensively by junior Andrew Smith, who is averaging 18.5 points and 9.5 rebounds per game, as the 6-11 center was the team\u2019s third-leading scorer and second-leading rebounder a year ago.\u00a0 For the third consecutive year, the program was picked to win the Horizon League, but no player ended up on the preseason All-League team.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Cardinals due to their 7-2 ATS mark as a road favorite, while the Bulldogs are 2-3 ATS versus Big East Conference opponents.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on a winning season and let the college basketball handicappers at Maddux Sports line your pockets with cash.\u00a0 Long term packages are available now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No. 7 Louisville Cardinals at Butler Bulldogs Saturday, 11\/19\/11, 2:00 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 ESPN3 Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 Louisville -3 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 Louisville -4 Opening Total:\u00a0 129.5 Current Total:\u00a0 129.5 Odds Courtesy of Bookmaker Louisville is set to play its first road of the season and comes in with a perfect 2-0 record\u00a0 that includes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":9757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[5790,1394,695,5788,5789,556,755],"class_list":["post-19503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-andrew-smith","tag-brad-stevens","tag-butler-bulldogs","tag-chane-behanan","tag-hinkle-fieldhouse","tag-louisville-cardinals","tag-rick-pitino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503","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=19503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19504,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19503\/revisions\/19504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}