College Basketball Betting – Texas at (20) West Virginia

Texas Longhorns at (20) West Virginia Mountaineers (-3.5, 136.5 o/u)

The No. 20 West Virginia Mountaineers (21-6, 9-5 Big 12) have beaten two ranked teams in their last two outings. This evening, they’ll host the Texas Longhorns (17-10, 6-8 Big 12) – a team headed in the opposite direction – at the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown (7:00 p.m. Eastern).

Eight days ago, the Mountaineers upset then-No. 8 Kansas by one point (62-61), keeping their hopes of a Big 12 regular season title alive.

On Saturday, the team stayed hot by downing then-No. 22 OK State by ten on the road (73-63).

Leading scorer Juwan Staten came up huge in both games, scoring 20 points against Kansas and leading all scorers with 22 points (and seven assists) against the Cowboys.

The senior guard is cautiously optimistic of what his young team can achieve down the stretch. “The confidence to beat Kansas and just play the way we played against them, … We’re just trying to stay within ourselves, do what we’re supposed to do and just see what happens,” said Staten.

Texas comes into tonight on a two-game losing streak (Oklahoma and Iowa State) and two games below .500 in conference play.

“We just have to find a way,” said sophomore Kendall Yancy said after scoring 29 points against Iowa State. “We’ll figure it out. We ain’t got time to be feeling sorry for ourselves.”

Star guard Isaiah Taylor was invisible in the game against Oklahoma, scoring five points on 1/10 shooting. He rebounded with 23 points on 44-percent shooting against Iowa State, but it wasn’t enough for the win.

The streaking Mountaineers are 3.5-point favorites for tonight’s game.

Looking at the trends, Texas is 5-11 SU in its last 16 on the road, but 5-0 ATS at West Virginia. West Virginia is 16-3 SU in its last 19 home games, but 2-4 ATS in the last six.

(Photo credit: Randall Chancellor [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)