College Basketball Betting – FSU at (2) Virginia
By Zack Garrison in News
Updated: January 17, 2018 at 9:40 am ESTPublished:
Florida State Seminoles at (2) Virginia Cavaliers (-15.5, 116 o/u)
The No. 2 Virginia Cavaliers (24-1, 12-1 ACC) are proving to be one of the toughest teams to play against in all of college basketball. Tonight, the Wahoos and their suffocating defense will face dynamic freshman point guard Xavier Rathan-Mayes and the Florida State Seminoles (15-12, 7-7 ACC) at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville (6:30 p.m. Eastern).
The Cavaliers only loss this season came against No. 4 Duke late in January. Since then, Virginia has won five consecutive games, including a 12-point victory over the Pitt Panthers on Monday. Virginia’s offense struggled at times against Pitt – much as it has done all season – but the defense was its usual stout self, surrendering just 49 points in 40 minutes.
“It’s frustrating when your shots aren’t falling and you can’t seem to get things going offensively, but at the same time, as long as we were getting stops, we weren’t going to be too frustrated with ourselves,” Virginia guard Malcolm Brogdon said. “When your offense isn’t going well, you’ve got to lean on something, and for us, our identity is defense. It works out great for us.”
Florida State, meanwhile, is making a bid to move up the ACC standings. After losing three of their first four conference games, the Noles have now won three of their last four and are back to .500 in the ACC. Last time out, FSU trumped Boston College, 69-60, despite a poor shooting performance from Rathan-Mayes (3/14 from the field).
Junior guard Devon Bookert picked up the slack for the Noles, scoring 18 points on 4/5 shooting from beyond the arc. As a team, Florida State hit on 8/12 from three in that game.
“They were high-percentage shots,” FSU coach Leonard Hamilton said. “We made three, four, five passes and got uncontested shots. That’s what ball movement will do for you against a team that is playing good defense.”
Virginia is 10-4 SU in its last 14 games at home against Florida State, but 3-6 ATS the last nine of those.
With the Cavaliers laying 15.5 tonight, FSU and the points looks like better value.
(Photo credit: Thomson20192 (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)
Sports Writer
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.
