College Basketball Betting – Arizona State at (13) Utah

Arizona State Sun Devils at (13) Utah Utes (-12)

A Pac-12 duel between the No. 13 Utah Utes (21-5, 11-3 Pac-12) and the Arizona State Sun Devils (15-12, 7-7 Pac-12) is on the schedule for tonight. The teams will tangle at the Jon M. Huntsman Center in Salt Lake City at 10:30 p.m. Eastern.

The Utes are coming off a 69-58 road loss to Oregon last weekend, which put an end to their five-game winning streak. The loss dropped Utah one game back of Arizona for first place in the conference. But head coach Larry Krystkowiak doesn’t see it as a major setback.

“You won’t know our record by our approach every day,” said Krystkowiak. “It’s human nature to be humbled after losses. You try and practice and prepare like you lost the last game. We want everyone to stay hungry.

“That’s the great thing about sports. We can get the taste out of our mouth.”

Some pundits are concerned that Utah will get caught looking ahead to its heavyweight tilt with No. 7 Arizona on the weekend, but don’t count Krystkowiak among the worriers.

“We aren’t concerned with [Arizona State] being a trap game … Nothing has changed with our approach. … We won’t discuss Arizona until Thursday after the game. That’s our mindset,” said the coach.

Arizona State, meanwhile, has quietly crept back to .500 in the Pac-12 with three straight wins.  Two of those came against the conferences worst teams – USC and Washington – but the Sun Devils also downed a decent UCLA squad, 68-66, last Wednesday.

Utah is listed as a 12-point favorite at the moment.

Trend-wise, Arizona State is 1-5 straight up and against the spread in its last six games in Utah. The Utes are 20-7 ATS in their last 27 as a favorite and 40-15-1 ATS in their last 56 as a 7.0-12.5-point favorite.

(Photo credit: the_robio (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)