Big Monday - 2/16

Texas A&M +2 Texas - Neither of these teams is playing particularly well right now. Texas finally ended their 3 game slide last week with a 99-74 trouncing of Oklahoma State before going to Boulder and making it 2 in a row in an OT barnburner. A&M has lost 3 straight, but they've come against at Oklahoma, K-State at home, and at Baylor with all of the games being competitive. So, it's hard to tell if they're close to palying well or they're close to having their morale break and giving up. With the hated Longhorns rolling to town with ESPN for Big Monday, the place should be rocking. Texas is good enough to go in there and win this game, but the Aggies are good enough to put up a fight. Big 12 teams that play on Big Monday after a Saturday road game are 1-3 against the number, and ALL of those teams hosted the Big Monday game. With both of these teams fitting that bill, the UNDER might be worth a look when it posts later today. Texas has the Big Monday triple-suck as their on the road (1) after a Saturday road game (2) that went to overtime (3). They're the first team to have to do Saturday-Monday on the road this season.

Connecticut -3 1/2 Pittsburgh - Huge Big East game as the conferences top 2 teams square off. I lead toward the Huskies in this spot for a couple of reasons, first their young big guys are really starting to learn and play good basketball. UConn can defend you inside and out and rarely give up more than about 60 points. More importantly, though...Pitt really only has a couple of decent wins away from home. They won at Florida State in a low-scoring affair, decent win, and probably their best. They won at Georgetown before the Hoyas fell totally off the map, which is a hard one to figure. In their recent efforts away from home against ranked foes, they've lost to Louisville and Villanova. I'm just not convinced on this team yet, so I'll lay the points.

Big Monday

Baylor -1 Kansas - Baylor is a bad matchup for the Jayhawks in this spot. Young KU team on the road on Big Monday, an athletic perimeter oriented team with enough bodies to make Sherron Collins guard somebody good, an good low post player in Kevin Rogers that can offset the advantage that Kansas gains with Cole Aldrich most games, and Baylor might be legimately better at the three spots on the floor not occupied by Aldrich/Collins. The Jayhawks haven't played well the last couple times out, trailing most of the game against Nebraska before pulling one out and letting a 21 point lead get trimmed to 2 against Colorado in Lawrence on Saturday. The 6-0 conference record is a product of the schedule setting up perfectly. This is a team that needs more points here.