UCLA, USC face tough odds in Pac-12 tournament
Editor’s note: Each week, VSiN.com experts provide their take on Las Vegas sports betting action.
It’s easy for oddsmakers to pick the favorite in this week’s Pac-12 Conference basketball tournament in Las Vegas. It all starts with senior point guard Payton Pritchard and Oregon, the regular-season champion.
But predicting how the bracket will play out will be an extreme test for handicappers.
Seven teams have legitimate shots to make the NCAA tournament field. Aside from the Ducks, Arizona and Colorado are considered locks. The four teams perched on the fringe are USC, UCLA, Arizona State and Stanford.
Oregon (24-7) should scare the rest of the Pac-12 pack. The Ducks are 6-1 straight up and against the spread in their last seven games behind the leadership and playmaking of Pritchard, who scored 29 points Saturday night in a victory over Stanford. He helped lead the Ducks to last year’s conference tournament title, the third in the last seven years for coach Dana Altman.
The Westgate SuperBook opened Oregon as the 2-1 tournament favorite, followed by Arizona (7-2) and Colorado (9-2). But the Wildcats are stumbling, losing four of five, and the Buffaloes have dropped four in a row.
Arizona State (10-1) and Stanford (10-1) are in NCAA bubble trouble, with neither slumping team packing any March momentum.
The three teams with the most odds value are UCLA (8-1), USC (14-1) and Washington (20-1). The Trojans denied the Bruins a share of the regular-season title Saturday when Jonah Mathews made a three-pointer with one second remaining in a 54-52 win. The Huskies finished last in the standings, but they are hot and just swept their two-game trip through Arizona, beating the Wildcats as 101⁄2-point underdogs Saturday night in Tucson.
An Arizona-Washington rematch is Wednesday, with USC facing the winner. Oregon is in the same half of the bracket, so the Trojans’ road to the title game has a couple of serious obstacles. If the seeds hold, the Bruins would play Arizona State in a semifinal Friday.
Best bet: Oregon (+200) over UCLA in the championship game. The Bruins need to win at least one and maybe two games this week to feel good about their NCAA chances, but running the table with a freshman point guard in Tyger Campbell is a lot to ask when Pritchard is on the other side. The Ducks, who were seeded sixth last year and won four games in four days, look likely to repeat.
Playing the Lakers
Despite skepticism from betting markets, the Lakers performed like champions in comfortable victories against Milwaukee and the Clippers. The final scores were almost identical.
On Friday night, the Lakers (favored by 11⁄2 points) defeated the Bucks 113-103. Home-court advantage is generally worth three points in the NBA. That betting line means the most important influences on the line believed the Bucks were about 11⁄2 points better than the Lakers on a neutral court.
On Sunday, the Lakers (21⁄2-point underdogs) beat the Clippers 112-103 at their shared Staples Center. Markets thought the host Clippers would be about two points better.
LeBron James and company beat expectations by 81⁄2 and 111⁄2 points. You’ve likely heard the handicapping angle that high-profile teams are usually overrated because of media hype. The Lakers have covered four in a row and nine of their last 11 and are 35-26-1 against the spread this season. Backers are up 6.4 betting units after accounting for the standard 10% vigorish on losses.
Sunday’s win was particularly impressive because the Clippers had been playing well. They had covered by 22 points against Denver, 10 at Oklahoma City and 14 at Houston. All those teams look playoff-bound.
An overlooked handicapping point is that the Lakers play elite defense. Both the Bucks and Clippers scored just 103 points, doing so on 112 and 101 possessions, respectively. The Lakers rank third in the NBA in defensive efficiency, which is points adjusted for pace. The Clippers are an impressive fifth, which is why they’re also on the short list of serious championship hopefuls.
This week, the Lakers will host Brooklyn on Tuesday night before hosting nationally televised games against Houston (7:30 p.m. Thursday, TNT) and Denver (6 p.m. Sunday, ESPN).
The Clippers, still in the black for bettors at 34-29 against the spread, look to bounce back Tuesday at Golden State (7:30 p.m., TNT), Friday against Brooklyn and Saturday against Zion Williamson and New Orleans.