Betting Stuff: Buying, selling Week 17 college basketball trends

The preseason AP No. 1 team fell out of the poll this week. With UConn and Gonzaga both out of the poll as well, 3 of the top 6 teams in the preseason poll were nowhere to be found when voters put together the Week 17 poll.

Kansas dropped out this week after road losses to Utah (74-67) and BYU (91-57) last week. And, no, that BYU score is not a typo. The Cougars beat a ranked Kansas team worse than any unranked team ever had before. And as a result, the Jayhawks saw their record 231-week streak of appearances in the AP poll come to an end.

Things are not well in Lawrence, Kansas.

But are the Jayhawks too far gone? That’s just one of several trends I’m focusing on in college basketball right now.  

Take: Chaz Lanier can do what Dalton Knecht couldn’t

So long as Tennessee wins at least 1 more game before the NCAA Tournament begins, it would mark the fourth straight season Rick Barnes’ group has gone into tournament play with 23 or more wins. Tennessee has had a top-3 defense in each of the 4 seasons, according to KenPom’s efficiency metrics. 

Tennessee has yet to have a top-25 offense. 

At this point, do Vol fans really care what happens in the regular season? It’s not about getting to the NCAA Tournament for Barnes, who is set to make a fifth consecutive trip as a top-5 seed. It’s about making a deep run. And that is highly contingent on the offensive output.

Barnes is 9-6 in tourney games as the Tennessee head coach. The Vols have made it past the Sweet 16 only once, and 5 of the 6 losses have come to lower-seeded teams. 

Last year, the Vols made it to the doorstep of the program’s first Final Four. But they lost by 6 to Purdue. Dalton Knecht scored 37 points and it didn’t matter. His teammates combined to shoot 10-for-31 from the floor (32.3%). 

Zach Edey scored 40 points for Purdue, and the Boilermakers won by 6 because despite the shot-makers around Edey going 3-for-15 from 3. Purdue couldn’t put the Vols away. The Vols couldn’t take advantage. 

Knecht is gone, but Chaz Lanier is doing his best to be a like-for-like replacement. In Saturday’s win at Texas A&M, Lanier buried 8 of his 13 triples and scored 30 points. It was an outstanding display of shooting on the road, complete with quick-fire triples as a spot-up shooter from all around the floor and a few sweet pull-ups. 

Lanier scored 22 first-half points while making 6 of his first 7 attempts from beyond the arc. A&M had no answers within the constraints of its defense and at one point tried to triple-team him. 

Frankly, no one expected this from Lanier. Through his first 3 seasons at North Florida, his career-high per-40 scoring average was 9.5. Last season, he jumped to a 23.6 points-per-40 scorer. And even after making the jump from the A-Sun to the toughest SEC we’ve maybe ever seen, Lanier is scoring 23.3 points per 40 minutes. 

Even if you just wanted to look at conference play, Lanier is a 20-point-per-40 guy for the Volunteers right now. His game translated. And it wasn’t a 1-year fluke with the Ospreys. 

Can he carry the Vols in the postseason? 

I think that’s the wrong question. 

It’s not about Lanier, just like it wasn’t about Knecht. In the Volunteers’ final 3 Tournament games last season, Knecht’s teammates took 124 shots, made 47 of them (37.9%), and scored 129 points while Knecht himself provided 81 on 70 shot attempts.

Are the Vols going to be a 1-man show? Or can guys around Lanier knock down big buckets as well?

I think the most interesting thing to happen in Saturday’s win over A&M came in the final 3:33. 

Tennessee scored 17 points and Lanier only supplied 2 of them — from the foul line in the final 12 seconds of a 2-score game. 

Jordan Gainey hit a pair of massive triples, the first of which put Tennessee up 4 and the second of which put the Vols up 6 with 2:28 to play. And then Zakai Zeigler hit a contested wing triple with 21 seconds left to ice the game for good. Tennessee went up 6. Zeigler, who missed a go-ahead 3 in the closing seconds of a loss to Auburn last month, scored 7 of his 16 in the final 4 minutes. Gainey scored 8 of his 14 in the final 4 minutes. 

Tennessee needs some of its other guys to make big plays in the Tournament. The offensive burden can’t fall squarely on one player. It has to be shared. Zeigler (13.5 PPG) and Gainey (10.7) must be confident postseason shot-takers. 

When it happened, I questioned the play design to give Zeigler the final shot in the loss to Auburn. It wasn’t the same spot on Saturday, nor were the stakes quite the same, but Barnes once again trusted his senior point guard to shoot it late with the game in the balance.  

If Zeigler is going to make those shots, Tennessee (+290 at FanDuel) can absolutely make a Final Four run. Because we all know Lanier can turn into a flamethrower on his best nights. 

Verdict: BUY

Related: With March Madness right around the corner, check out our guide on the best Tennessee betting apps and the sign-up bonuses they have to offer.

Take: Kansas is broken

Bill Self owes Oklahoma State a gift basket. In desperate need of a “get right” game that could stop the bleeding, Kansas hosted the hapless Cowboys on Saturday and splattered them, 96-64. Kansas led by 29 at the half and pushed that lead to as many as 39 points in the second half. Four Jayhawks scored in double figures. Eight players scored at least 6 points while no one had more than 16.

It was a well-rounded offensive effort from Self’s group. 

Entering Saturday, Kansas had lost 5 of its last 8. That included a 7-point road loss at Utah and a 34-point road loss at BYU. 

The BYU defeat was damaging for Self. It was the second consecutive game in which Kansas never led. It was the worst loss of the Self era. It was the third-worst loss by a Kansas team ever. Former players were questioning the want-to of the guys on the court. Self said after the game his team needed to “get away from each other” and regroup. 

Last year marked the first time in Self’s tenure Kansas lost more than 6 conference games in a season. Now, the Jayhawks have done it twice. 

Since the turn of the century, Kansas has never been seeded below the 4-line in an NCAA Tournament. That will very likely change this year, with Bracket Matrix showing the Jayhawks with an average seed line of 6.0. 

The rotation is stitched together, with 5 of the top 8 options being first-year players. Four of those are transfers.

And the star of the show, Hunter Dickinson, was practically unplayable in the loss to BYU. The Jayhawks were outscored by 39 points in Dickinson’s 29 minutes on the court. 

So, is Kansas broken? 

This is the same team that opened the year preseason No. 1. It’s the same team that has an 8-point, neutral-site victory over Michigan State and a 3-point, neutral-site victory over Duke. Kansas also just hammered Iowa State at home a few weeks ago. 

The Jayhawks are No. 5 in the country in defensive efficiency, per KenPom. They have a top-10 shot defense that forces teams to jack jumpers.

However, Kansas does a couple of things that are just troublesome as far as the tournament is concerned. They don’t take free throws with any regularity — 363rd nationally in free throw rate, per KenPom — and they don’t create enough extra opportunities for themselves. They’re a mediocre rebounding team on the offensive glass and don’t turn opponents over. 

Maybe the most glaring issue with these Jayhawks as we prepare for the postseason is their play away from home. Since the 2 aforementioned neutral-site wins, Kansas is 3-7 straight up in road games and 3-7 against the spread. 

This looks like a first-round out waiting to happen.

Verdict: BUY

Take: Michigan State will make the Final Four

Bart Torvik’s simulations suggest a 10.9% chance Michigan State advances to the Final Four this season. That’s slightly better than the +900 odds the Spartans have on DraftKings. 

Tom Izzo’s bunch is up to No. 10 in KenPom’s net ratings. They have the 12th-ranked defensive efficiency and a top-25 offensive efficiency. They are a horrible 3-point shooting team, but are quite excellent inside the arc. 

Per KenPom, MSU connects on 55.2% of its 2-point shots and 79.9% of its foul shots, the latter of which is good for eighth nationally. MSU is adept at attacking the basket and getting to the foul line without seeing a ton of its attempts swatted away.

The Spartans are going to be very hard to prepare for on a quick turnaround. There’s nothing inherently flashy about the way they play, and it’s hard to simulate physicality. Michigan State is tough. And its ability to rebound the ball, generate transition opportunities, and cash in at the charity stripe all translate to postseason success. 

Michigan State went on the road last Friday and beat Michigan by 7. It was the Spartans’ sixth win in 9 tries this season in games decided by 7 points or less. They know how to close. If I had to pick one team from the Big Ten to advance to the national semifinals, I’d pick Michigan State over Wisconsin and Maryland. 

That being said, will Michigan State actually advance to the national semis? It’s hard to back a team that struggles so heavily to shoot 3s. 

And MSU doesn’t even try them. The Spartans are 335th in the country in 3-point rate on offense, with just 32.3% of their shot attempts coming from beyond the arc. Regardless of location or situation, it’s a bad shot. MSU shoots 29.6% on 3s this year. 

Based on Joe Lunardi’s latest bracket projections for ESPN, Michigan State could face Marquette in the second round and Auburn in the Sweet 16. It’s hard to see MSU keeping pace with the Tiger offense. Houston, a projected 2-seed in MSU’s portion of the bracket, is better at the Spartans’ brand of basketball.

Michigan State is going to be a very difficult team for someone to contend with during the tournament’s second weekend, but I don’t think what we’ve seen thus far suggests the Spartans can win their region. 

Verdict: SELL

Take: Arkansas is finding its way at the right time

Thanks to a stunning 92-85 win over Mizzou last Saturday, Arkansas is back in the bracket. 

The Razorbacks had lost 3 of 4 prior to last weekend and I had just written in this space a week ago that “I don’t trust Arkansas to pull off an upset.” 

Well, they have. And because of it, in Joe Lunardi’s latest bracket projections for ESPN, the Hogs have moved up to an 11 seed as one of the last 4 teams into the field. With remaining games against Texas at home, South Carolina and Vanderbilt on the road, and then Mississippi State on the final day of the regular season, Arkansas appears to have a solid path. 

The one big game the Razorbacks had left, they got. Texas is 5-9 in league play and just lost to South Carolina, giving the Gamecocks their first league win of the year. Mississippi State followed up a pair of wins over ranked teams by losing to Oklahoma. 

Mizzou was going to give Arkansas the most oomph and, to their credit, the Razorbacks got it done. 

I am less than convinced. Mizzou got just 20 minutes of action from Anthony Robinson II, saw Caleb Grill shoot 2-for-12 from beyond the arc, and it still scored 85 points. And this was a classic letdown spot for Mizzou, which poured everything into a 12-point, midweek win over Alabama. 

Arkansas, which has gotten it done on the defensive end of the court all season, had to outscore the Tigers. The Hogs allowed 1.164 points per possession. 

This was just the fourth time in conference play Arkansas scored more than 75 points in a game.

The Razorbacks have been volatile this season. I’m not sure how indicative Saturday’s win actually was of a team that is rounding the corner. Arkansas has plenty of talent, but it just hasn’t been consistent enough this year to realize that talent. And the closing stretch is concerning. 

As things stand, Arkansas has a 63.8% chance to get into the tournament according to Bart Torvik. It is not a lock. Neither are the Longhorns or the Commodores. Vandy could very well lose its next 2 games, turning the March 4 game against Arkansas into a must-win spot. Texas is trending down and needs a lifeline. And then there’s South Carolina, which has consistently played the league’s best to the bitter end on its home court.

If the Razorbacks follow up the win over Mizzou with a loss to Texas or South Carolina, we’re right back where we were prior to the weekend. The Razorbacks are -250 to make the field at bet365, which just feels a touch too high.  

Verdict: SELL

Bet to consider: bet365 has the Razorbacks at +200 to miss the NCAA Tournament. I’d consider that number right now.

Take: North Carolina can make the NCAA Tournament

North Carolina is on the bubble. Joe Lunardi has the Tar Heels as one of the first 4 teams out of the bracket. Bracket Matrix shows Carolina appearing in 4 brackets. There seems to be some positive momentum here for UNC, which has won 4 of its last 5. 

I struggle to see how wins over bad ACC teams in an overall down year for the ACC produce a tournament bid. 

North Carolina played 6 out-of-conference teams that are currently projected to make the NCAA Tournament. It went 1-5 in those games. North Carolina has gone 0-4 against the ACC’s projected tournament representatives, with 3 of the losses coming by double-digits. 

This current hot spell has featured wins over a 6-10 team in ACC play, a 5-11 team in league play, and a 4-12 team in league play. Carolina can continue to pad wins with upcoming games against Florida State (7-9), Miami (2-14), and Virginia Tech (7-9) but none of those results will matter if the Tar Heels get smacked by Duke again to close out the regular season. 

According to KenPom, North Carolina played a top-10 nonconference schedule and has an overall strength of schedule that ranks 27th nationally. But the Tar Heels have 2 wins all year over KenPom top-50 teams and only 1 win over another team that is projected to make the field of 68. North Carolina has just a single, solitary Quad 1 win.

Barring an upset of Duke on March 8, the only path here is an NC State-like run at the ACC Tournament. 

Verdict: SELL