Screw The Books Pick of the Day

Coming off of a 1-1 day, Jimmy The Greek would like to apologize for those that put their trust in Old Dominion. Matt Howard haunted me in my dreams last night as the final play of that game was replaying over and over again in my head. For those that kept the faith in the Greek and took Wisconsin in the late game, all is well and today is a new day. Since our one win was one of my "trend" picks, I will lead with those...



Bet Long Island +17.5
-#2 Seeds are 7-21-4 against the spread when playing opponents that are coming off of a straight up win in their previous game
-#15 seeds are 41-31-4 against the spread versus #2 seeds



Bet Syracuse -11.5, Purdue -14
-#3 Seeds coming off a straight up loss in their previous game are 22-8-1 against the spread, including 6-1 over the last four years


As for my personal pick of the day, I like the Oakland Golden Grizzlies at +10.5. The reason why the mid majors usually struggle against the power conferences is due to their lack of size. That shouldn't be an issue for the Golden Grizzlies as their star player and NBA lottery prospect, Keith Benson (18 ppg and 10.1 rpg), patrols the paint. Oakland is battle tested as their non-conference schedule included games against Tennessee, Ohio State, Purdue, and Michigan State. They are a team that likes to get out and run and can score quickly as they averaged 85.6 ppg, good enough for second in the country. As they did last year, Texas is stumbling into the tournament and this will be a tough matchup for a young team that struggled with the pressures of being highly ranked earlier in the season.