With Norchad Omier's Injury, Which Betting Line to Choose for Miami vs Drake?
The #5 seeded Hurricanes will tip off versus the #12 seeded Bulldogs on Friday night in the 2023 NCAA Tournament.
The 7:25 start on TBS should be a good one, but there’s difficulty for betters with the injury to Miami’s talented power forward Norchad Omier.
He’s averaged 13.6 points, 9.7 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 1.3 blocks and 1 steal per game thus far during the 2022–2023 season.
This past Friday, Omier left the game against Duke with 18:56 to go in the first half, having come down on the foot of center Dereck Lively II.
There’s been nothing definitive about Omier’s status, as Miami head coach Jim Larranaga made only a brief comment about his star forward’s status earlier this week.
“There’s really no update at this point,” said Larrañaga. “We’ve got our fingers crossed and we wish him the best but we’ve got to prepare both ways. We’ll have him or we don’t have him. Because we don’t know what his status will be for quite a while.”
With that comment from coach Larranaga in mind, here are four different sportsbooks and their odds, over/under, and money line for the Miami Hurricanes versus the Drake Bulldogs as of Thursday morning, just over one day from the game starting.
SI Sportsbook
Miami -2 over Drake
Over/Under: 146.5
Money Line: Miami (-138), Drake (+110)
MGM
Miami -2.5 over Drake
Over/Under: 146.5
Money Line: Miami (-145), Drake (+120)
Action Network
Miami -2 over Drake
Over/Under: 146.5
Money Line: Miami (-130), Drake (+110)
FanDuel
Miami -1.5 over Drake
Over/Under: 147.5
Money Line: Miami (-134), Drake (+112)
Just the Money Lines
This was interesting as well, with three more sportsbooks offering their personal money line options for gamblers.
BetMGM
Miami: -135
Drake: +110
Bet Rivers
Miami: -136
Drake: +114
PointsBet
Miami: -130
Drake: +110
Betting Trends
As an example of how lines can move, the Action Network opened with Miami -3.5 over Drake. It’s down 1.5 points. That’s a big difference in the world of betting. Then again, not every NCAA Tournament game has a key player with an unknown ankle injury status.
One could assume that betters have leaned towards Omier not playing against Drake, or at least being hobbled during the contest, for the Action Network – and other sportsbooks – to move the line more than a point. Whatever the case might be, the lines have been about 2 points in Miami’s favor the past couple of days.
It will be interesting to see how the next 24 hours go and if there’s any further update about Omier’s health. From Miami’s perspective, it did draw good fortune with playing a Friday night game which gave Omier the most time available to heal.
If the Canes had played Thursday afternoon, would he have been able to take the court? Maybe he will not play anyway, but at least he’s been afforded more time to be on the mend.
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Fan Nation High school football recruiting analyst covering the state of Florida, as well as across the Southeastern United States and the state of Texas.