College Basketball Betting: Fighting Irish at Huskies
Posted on Febuary 12, 2009 | 4:02 PM ET Filed under:The Big East regular season nears its climax with two more weekends of games before the big show that is the Big East Conference tournament in two weeks at Madison Square Garden. One of the more important games remaining on the slate takes place on Saturday in Storrs when Notre Dame's Fighting Irish tangle with the Connecticut Huskies (2 pm Eastern, CBS).
Notre Dame (16-11) was expected to be a contender in the Big East this season, a shoo-in for the NCAA tournament and a serious threat to get to the Sweet 16, and possibly beyond. And in early January, the Irish sat at 12-3. But then ND hit a tough part of its schedule, and lost seven games in a row, capped by a 26-point blowout defeat at UCLA. The Irish have won four of their last five games, though, after beating Rutgers on Wednesday night 70-65.
And Notre Dame's struggles have been very apparent to their financial backers, as the Irish have covered just six of 21 pointspreads this season.
On the other side of this matchup, the Huskies gave coach Jim Calhoun his 800th career Division-1 victory with a 93-82 win over Marquette on Wednesday night in Milwaukee. So with two games to play – UConn ends its regular season with a game at Pittsburgh next Saturday – the Huskies at 14-2 lead the Big East Conference by a half-game over second-place Louisville, and a game and a half over the third-place Panthers.
Connecticut is now 3-1 straight up, but 1-3 against the spread, since G Jerome Dyson went down and out for the season with a knee injury.
Meanwhile, the Irish at 7-8 are looking up at nine teams above them in the Big East standings. And while some NCAA tournament projections include Notre Dame, some do not. The Irish finish their regular season with home games vs. Villanova and St. John's next week, before heading to New York for the Big East tournament, where they'll be seeded somewhere in the middle of the 16-team pack.
So while Connecticut is playing for a conference championship and a possible No. 1 seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament, Notre Dame might be playing its next four games for its postseason life.
These two teams met a month ago, when Connecticut went to South Bend and beat the Irish 69-61, covering the spread as two-point road favorites. The game also stayed well under its total of 156.
Last season, these teams split their two games, both winning at home.
Oddsmaker.com is listing the Huskies as co-second favorites, along with Pittsburgh, at +500 on its updated NCAA championship betting board, behind only North Carolina at +300. Notre Dame is listed among the longshots on Oddsmaker's board, at +12,500.
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