Final Four betting line<\/a> on this game what it is? Why is Virginia a whopping 6 point favorite over an Auburn team that has already dispatched three of college hoops’ elite schools–Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky–en route to the Final Four? Part of the reason is the public perception that the ACC is a better basketball conference than the SEC. Maybe you can make a case–statistical or otherwise–that on a macro level the ACC is better but for the purpose of this game it just doesn’t matter. Another reason might be the injury to 6-8 Chuma Okeke–he tore his ACL in the win over North Carolina. Okeke is a big dude and good for 10 points and 7 boards per game but even without him Auburn still has more bench depth than Virginia. Keep in mind that the Final Four is one of the most ‘public’ oriented college basketball games of the year which means that the storylines they squawk about on ESPN and the like will be magnified in terms of importance. <\/p>\n\n\n\nVirginia boasts an impressive 33-3 SU record and was a solid team against the spread in just about every category including overall where they went 25-11 against the number. Auburn was a decent though not quite as spectacular 30-9 SU\/20-14-4 ATS. Virginia does give up the fewest points per game in college hoops with their ‘pack line’ defense and they like to play at a very slow deliberate pace. Auburn isn’t quite ‘uptempo’ and their possessions per game is middle of the back but sufficient that they can put pressure on Virginia to score buckets. UVA did win against Purdue playing at a faster pace than usual but it was a game where all of their three points shots were dropping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ironically, Okeke’s absence might be an advantage here as it forces Auburn to go smaller and faster. To beat the packline defense you need guards that can penetrate, create and spread the floor. Auburn’s starting duo of Bryce Brown (15.8 PPG) and Jared Harper (15.2 PPG) are made to order for that task having the requisite skills, poise and smarts. They’ve got some good guards coming off the bench in Samir Doughty and J’Von McCormick. The contributions of Virginia’s bench is almost non existent–they scored a total of five points against Oregon and Purdue<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another factor for success against the packline defense is perimeter shooting and Auburn excels in that department. Not only does Auburn have the on court skills necessary to break up the packline formation they also have a very smart head coach in Bruce Pearl that will have a solid gameplan for his side to execute. The deeper you go in the NCAA tournament the more significant points become. All four of the Elite Eight games came down to the final possession and the four teams in action on Saturday are extremely evenly matched. Grab the points with Auburn and don’t be surprised if you see them playing in prime time on Monday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
BET AUBURN +6 OVER VIRGINIA<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The college basketball season is drawing to a close with only Saturday’s Final Four games and Monday’s NCAA championship game…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaab"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5321,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5319\/revisions\/5321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}