College Basketball Betting – (12) Notre Dame at (16) Louisville
(12) Notre Dame Fighting Irish at (16) Louisville Cardinals (-5, 136 o/u)
With just two games left on their regular season schedules, the No. 12 Notre Dame Fighting Irish (24-5, 12-4 ACC) and the No. 16 Louisville Cardinals (23-6, 11-5 ACC) are sitting third and fourth, respectively, in the ACC standings, separated by just one game. Both are already locks for March Madness, but they can improve their seeding for the big dance and the ACC tournament with a win tonight when they clash at the KFC Yum! Center (7:00 p.m. Eastern).
The Cardinals are on a three game winning streak and have won two straight on the road since dismissing starting point guard Chris Jones from the team amid rape charges.
In the team’s last outing, the Cardinals smashed Florida State, 81-59, in Tallahassee.
“I think we responded as a team should respond to a difficult situation. We played great team basketball,” said Louisville head coach Rick Pitino after the win. “This was a great performance by us late in the season, and we had to change our team, we are a different team now.”
Freshman guard Quentin Snider took Jones’ spot in the starting lineup and didn’t look out of place, scoring 11 points and adding four dimes.
Tonight, Louisville will be facing a Notre Dame team coming off one of its worst offensive performances of the season. The Irish – who average over 50-percent shooting from the floor and nearly 80 points per game – were held to just 34.7-percent during a 65-60 home loss to Syracuse on the weekend.
Head coach Mike Brey wasn’t pleased with the result, obviously, but he’s more concerned with how his team responds.
“I think the biggest thing is how will we play after a loss,” said Brey. “You’ll focus on that, can we bounce back after a loss? And just try and keep it in the now and not thinking ahead.”
The Cardinals are five-point favorites at the moment. In the trends, Louisville is 4-2 SU in its last six games against Notre Dame and 6-1 SU in its last seven at home against the Irish. The total has hit the over in the last five games in the series.
(Photo credit: Bradjward (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)
Zack is a tour guide whose favorite sports are football, baseball, and golf. He enjoys giving obnoxious commentary during games and hopes to some day write a book about sports. His favorite underdog victory was the Diamondbacks beating the Yankees in game 7 of the World Series.
