College Basketball Best Bets: Can Youngstown State Bounce Back As Underdogs?

What’s at stake tonight for Youngstown State? For starters, a postseason berth. Is that enough of a reason to bet on them as underdogs?

College basketball experts Three Man Weave are back with their two best bets for Thursday's slate. We're using the current odds from Westgate SuperBook (as of 3 p.m. ET) for these plays.

Wright State at Youngstown State
3MW's Pick: Youngstown State +6

What’s at stake tonight for the boys of Youngstown? For starters, a postseason berth–a win tonight secures the Penguins a .500 record regular season record, a qualifier for the CIT. Starting forward Naz Bohannon is well aware of this incentive, which he explicitly alluded to after a disappointing loss to Oakland on Saturday.

“We told the guys that we had the opportunity to get our 16th win and punch a postseason berth right then and there. It obviously didn’t happen. We’ve got to wake up and be ready to play the whole entire game,” Bohannon said.

Well, as Aaliyah once told us, “if at first you don’t succeed, dust yourself off and try again.”

To up the ante, a victory tonight would nudge the Penguins into sole possession of third place in a crowded Horizon League leaderboard. What’s the significance of third place, you ask? Guaranteed home court for the first two rounds of the Horizon League tournament, an enormous advantage in a league separated by the slimmest of margins. The only thing standing in between the Penguins and a commanding third place position in the conference leaderboard is Wright State, the Horizon’s gold standard program.

The Raiders’ consistency has been unrivaled this year, tripping up only twice in 15 Horizon League games. Though, that doesn’t mean these Raiders are bulletproof. 

By the oddsmakers’ standards, Wright State has been fragile away from the friendly confines of home, proven by a 2-4 record against the spread in conference play. Just three weeks ago the Raiders endured two life and death experiences on the road, barely escaping Milwaukee before ultimately losing outright to Green Bay two nights later. The question is, do the hungry and desperate Penguins have the chops to give the Raiders a similar scare?

The Penguins have a tendency to play to the level of its competition, precisely why YSU has been routinely underpriced by the oddsmakers against top-flight challengers this year. Just isolate the Penguins’ performances against their fiercest competitors this season, which I’ll conveniently define by top-125 caliber opponents in KenPom’s overall rankings: Louisville, West Virginia, Akron and Wright State. In those four games, Youngstown is 3-1 against the spread with one of those covers coming at the expense of Wright State in the first meeting between the two Horizon foes back on January 18. The Penguins had the Raiders trembling on their home floor, forcing Wright State to make a late push to sneak by with a narrow 7-point victory. Considering the fact that the Penguins were ice cold from the outside in that first meeting (4-for-21 from 3-point range), Youngstown effectively played the Horizon frontrunner to a stalemate.

This play tonight checks all the classic situational handicapping boxes: a bounce-back spot (coming off a crappy performance at Oakland), a revenge spot (a second crack at Wright State after a narrow defeat in the first matchup) and a motivational spot (an advantageous sense of desperation against a potential unmotivated Raiders squad). 

Northern Kentucky at Cleveland State
3MW Pick: Northern Kentucky -8

Any time you can back a team that just lost by 30 points at home you have to do it, right? Especially when that team is now an eight-point road favorite?

Framed that way, it may not sound great, but the Norse are a solid bet tonight as they head out of town to face Cleveland State. Put simply, NKU is undervalued right now, and part of that is due to such an extreme result against UIC on Sunday. That loss dropped the Norse 29 spots in KenPom’s rankings, an incredibly large move for this late in the season. 

They also should be fully healthy, a roster state that has proven to be incredibly elusive this season. Star players Jalen Tate and Dantez Walton have missed 10 and 11 games, respectively, with Walton coming off the bench in the UIC debacle after missing NKU’s win over IUPUI on Valentine’s Day. Senior guard Tyler Sharpe, who has helped hold the team together during those absences, was battling an illness over the weekend. Walton should be back in the starting lineup, and Sharpe should have had plenty of fluids, soup, and medicine over the past three days.

In terms of matchup, NKU’s biggest edge is in taking advantage of Cleveland State’s iffy guard play. Coach Darrin Horn will mix in some pressure, and the Norse rank No. 47 in the country in steal rate, as Tate, Walton, Sharpe, and Trevon Faulkner have all shown quick hands and strong defensive instincts. The Vikings, meanwhile, rank 340th in offensive turnover rate, and recently, they’ve been missing two starting guards in Franklyn Penn (missed two games) and Craig Beaudion (three games) with undisclosed injuries. That makes CSU even more susceptible to sustained pressure.

The key will be to harass the Viking ball-handlers without fouling too much, as CSU’s only route to scoring efficiently is getting to the free throw line. New coach Dennis Gates did not have a lot of offensive talent waiting for him when he took over the job, and as a result, his squad ranks 342nd nationally in 3P% and 326th in 2P%. NKU does a decent (but not great) job of defending without fouling, and if they do that tonight, CSU is going to struggle to score.

Ordinarily, there might be some risk of complacency when heading into the second matchup with a team that NKU has already beaten by 26 points. But when you get completely embarrassed like the Norse did the last time they took the court, they should understand what can happen when they are not fully locked in. Motivation is crucial during the February doldrums of conference play, and the Norse should be quite anxious to get the horrendous taste of a blowout loss out of their mouths.

Northern Kentucky is better and healthier than its Horizon League foe, and the added boost of motivation to erase the UIC drubbing should allow those advantages to play out in full force.

3MW Record: 32-22-2

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