Rock Hill Recap (Part 2) and Monday CBB Bets

Last week I recapped my time at the Opening Day Marathon event in Rock Hill.  It truly was an amazing time and I will absolutley go back if Field of 68 does it again next year.  An underrated part of the event was the bars and restaurants in that same complex that stayed open well past midnight on a Sunday night to accomodate people attending the event.  Jameson shots and this photo were taken a few minutes before the 12AM ET tip off between Liberty and High Point.

Last Wednesday I talked about High Point and Queens in the context of their games.  I also chose to extensively highlight those two teams in Part 1 because I thought those were the two most impressive teams I saw at the event and I think both win their respective conferences again this season and make it back to the NCAA Tournament.  I nailed the OVER in the Queens game on Wednesday but High Point fell short for a 1-1 on bets from my last article.  High Point beat Washington State by 12 over the weekend but failed to cover the -13.5.  I think High Point is due to slam a lesser team so I'll be interested to see if we get a playable number on High Point when they host Southern Utah on Thursday.  Queens has now soared OVER in all three of their games this season.  It will be interesting to see how inflated the total is tomorrow when Queens heads to Provo to take on BYU.

Now lets take a look at the other six teams that played in the overnight portion of the event as well as a couple of bets for Monday night...

Liberty hung with a very good High Point team in the first half and then was blown out by a very good High Point team in the second half to finish with a 72-57 loss in their season opener.  The only game Liberty has played since was this past weekend against non D1 Boyce where the Flames predictably won 113-54.

We finally see Liberty in action against a Division 1 opponent on Friday when they host NC Central and I expect the result to be more reflective of where most have the Flames power rated this season. Liberty is pretty much a consensus pick to win Conference USA this season, there's some roster turnover but the Flames have a talented roster and project to be the best team in CUSA by some margin.  I also expect them to be far better than NC Central who is a middling MEAC team.  Liberty probably wins by margin on Friday night.

Going into the season I had Winthrop power rated much lower than many of the Big South previews I was reading and I feel like my thoughts have been validated by the Eagles 0-2 start.  Winthrop made a late push to make the Queens game look respectable but that was a 55-38 game at halftime and never as close as the 103-98 final suggests.  Winthrop also made a late push to try to avoid being upset at home by North Dakota but then one of their assistants did this...

This just isn't a good basketball team right now.  Keshawn Fisher has been a massive bright spot but outside of him this isn't a great roster and Micah Davis and Tee Harris (two projected starters) still haven't played.  Down the road if Winthrop gets Davis and Harris back and Fisher continues to be a legitimate go to scoring option I'll probably look to back Winthrop because they will likely be undervalued.  While Winthrop is short handed I think we see results like this past weekend where Winthrop loses as -9.5 home favorites to North Dakota.  Winthrop is probably in trouble on the road tomorrow night at Kennesaw State.

Homer take here but I think Siena ends up being better than Merrimack this year (even though most picked Merrimack to win the Metro Conference).  It's only been three games but the issue I'm noticing with Merrimack is the freshman Joey Gallo tabbed as the guy to replace Kevair Kennedy (now at Wake Forest) isn't that good.  Gallo knocked it out of the park with Budd Clark (now at Ole Miss) and Kennedy (now at Wake Forest) and those two players single handedly elevated Merrimack from middling MAAC team to contenter the past two seasons.  I think the hope was that Jeremiah Anderson would be THAT guy this year but so far he's come off the bench and was only a real factor in the game against Umass-Lowell (which Merrimack lost outright as a -9.5 favorite).  If Merrimack struggled with a team like Applachaian State I can only imagine what Florida does to the Warriors in Gainesville on Friday.

I'm all in on Northern Illinois and now the whole world probably is after the Huskies won in Dayton as a +19.5 underdog over the weekend.  New head coach Matt Majkrzak brings a unique style with him from D2 Northern Michigan that led all of Division 2 in offense last year and Max Weisbrod being eligable gives Northern Illinois the talent to have a real shot to win their new league.  Northern Illinois is no longer in the Missouri Valley, starting this year the Huskies hoop in the Horizion League which is wide open and they are certainly one of the teams that can win it.  Northern Illinois plays mostly road games in the non-conference and I think there will be additional opportunties to cash with NIU as an underdog in the coming weeks.

I talked about App State in "Part 1" being a live underdog in this game and as expected the books have given us a playable number here.  Dustin Kerns is an outstanding coach and I think he will have a game plan that will slow things down and frustrate Auburn for stretches in this game.  I made this number Auburn -21.5 so I think -24 is too many.  As long as Auburn doesn't go nucelar from three point range I think App State covers the +24 here.

Believe it or not this is actually a step up in class for Texas from Chicago State and Gardner Webb.  I upgraded Grambling more than any team I saw in Rock Hill due to the breakout performance of Isaiah Miranda who went off for a career high 29 points against Northern Illinois.  I doubt Miranda is able to replicate that against Texas but he's still a 7'2" big with some skill that clearly improved this past offseason.  Miranda was originally at Oklahoma State so there was a point in time where at least someone considered him to have P5 potential and I think Grambling is going to be the beneficiary of a number of programs giving up on him.

The fact Grambling shot 64 percent from the field and barely beat Northern Illinois is concerning but I think Grambling will be able to generate some offense in this game especially if Texas "calls off the dogs" late.  This line is starting to get out of control, I made this Texas -36.9 but some places are as high as -38.5 now so at that point I think you have to hold your nose and take the points (+38.5) with Grambling.