Texas vs Marquette Odds, Spread & Picks (Dec. 6)
- The #12 Texas Longhorns plays their first true road game of the season on Wednesday against the #8 Marquette Golden Eagles
- This is only Texas’ second game against a top-100 team
- See the Texas vs Marquette odds, spread, and picks for Dec. 6
The well-rested #12 Texas Longhorns (6-1, 0-0 away, 2-5 ATS) return from a six-day layoff on Wednesday when they play their first away game of the season in Milwaukee against the #8 Marquette Golden Eagles (6-2, 3-0 home, 4-3-1 ATS).
Tip-off at Fiserv Forum is scheduled for 8:00 pm ET. Despite the relative parity in their rankings, Shaka Smart’s Golden Eagles are a 7.5-point home favorite against his former team.
Texas vs Marquette Odds
| Team | Spread | Moneyline | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas Longhorns | +8.5 (-110) | +320 | O 147.5 (-110) |
| Marquette Golden Eagles | -8.5 (-110) | -385 | U 147.5 (-110) |
Texas is listed as a +320 underdog to win outright, while the game total is sitting at 147.5 in Wednesday’s college basketball odds. Marquette is 3-5 over/under this season. Texas is 4-3.
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Odds as of Dec. 5 on the FanDuel app.
Marquette recently surged into the top-five favorites in the March Madness odds (+1514). At +4286, Texas is just outside the top 15.
Since taking VCU to the Final Four in 2011, Smart hasn’t made it out of the second round of the NCAA Tournament. In six years with the Longhorns, he only made the tournament three times and lost in the first round each time.
Marquette Falls to Wisconsin … Again
The Golden Eagles will be eager to get back on the court after an ugly loss on Saturday to in-state rival Wisconsin (75-64 away). Marquette trailed by 13 at halftime and, though they closed the gap to one in the second half, never actually held a single lead in the game.
Saturday’s loss marked the third straight season that Marquette fell to the Badgers.
After a trio of wins over Illinois, UCLA, and Kansas in the first two weeks of the season, Marquette had a legitimate claim to the #1 spot on the polls. But a narrow 78-75 loss to Purdue coupled with the setback to the Badgers has quieted that talk.
Marquette’s hot start wasn’t unexpected. The Golden Eagles returned four of their top-five scorers from last season, when they went 27-9, won both the Big East regular-season and tournament titles, and earned a #2 seed in the NCAA Tournament.
The four aforementioned returnees – Kam Jones (16.4 PPG), Tyler Kolek (13.5 PPG), Oso Ighodaro (12.6 PPG), and David Joplin (8.3 PPG) – are the team’s four top scorers this season. Despite the pair of losses, Marquette still sits sixth in overall efficiency at KenPom and seventh at Haslametrics.
Texas Uncompetitive in First P6 Game of the Season
In his second season in Austin, Texas head coach Rodney Terry front-loaded his team’s schedule with easy games. Six of the Longhorns’ first seven opponents rated 162nd or lower at KenPom. The only one that didn’t, defending national champion UConn, routed Texas 81-71 at Madison Square Garden on on Nov. 20. The final score isn’t indicative of how lopsided the matchup was. The Huskies led by 16 just eight minutes into the game and led by double-digits for most of the vast majority of the 40 minutes.
Rodney’s gradual-entry program was likely motivated by the massive amount of roster turnover on his Longhorns. Two of his three top scorers – Marcus Carr (15.9 PPG) and Timmy Allen (10.5 PPG) – graduated while the other – Sir’Jabari Rice (13.0 PPG) – is now in the NBA. He landed a major acquisition on the transfer market, the prolific Max Abmas, who averaged at least 21.8 PPG in each of the last three season with Oral Roberts. But there is no denying the decrease in both talent and cohesion on this year’s team.
Abmas is scoring a team-high 16.7 PPG so far, but the Longhorn offense rates just 33rd in the nation in efficiency after finishing last year 16th.
Texas vs Marquette Prediction
Marquette already owns three victories better than anything on Texas’ resume. Their 14-point, neutral-court victory over Kansas will likely go down as one of the best wins of the season by any team, anywhere.
The Golden Eagles were awful from deep in their two losses, shooting 25% from beyond the arc against Wisconsin and 29.4% against Purdue. Their overall three-point percentage for the season is down considerably from last year (31.6% versus 35.3%) and that’s likely to regress, make that progress, to the mean as the weeks go by.
While this line is 8.5 at FanDuel, it’s still 7.5 on the DraftKings app, and that’s a number I expect Marquette to cover.
Texas vs Marquette pick: Marquette -7.5 (-110)
Sascha Paruk’s 2023-24 NCAAM betting record:
- ATS: 7-8 (-1.63 units)
- Player props: 1-0 (+0.87 units)
All wagers one unit unless expressly stated otherwise.
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Sascha was a hockey player in his youth, a lawyer in his capricious mid-20s, and has been with SBD since 2014. He specializes in football, basketball, politics, baseball, and hockey.
