YTD 3-0

Xavier -5

At first look it looks like -5 is a lot of points to give a Butler team that plays almost all their games down to the wire. Especially since their previous meeting at home with Xavier ended with Butler beating the Musketeers 88-76. Butler comes into this game ranked #19 in the country. Even after a narrow loss to division leader Villanova by 3, they came back and beat a last place Creighton team by 2. On the other side Xavier went on the road and beat rival Cincinnati by 2 in their last outing.

Why I’m on Xavier is because Butler is an overrated team. The ranking mean nothing, they are average at best away from home 5-3 while Xavier is 12-2 straight up at home. This is an Xavier team that wins by an avg margin of 13 points at home. Line opened about where it should have at -3.5 but moved to -5 even with majority of bets coming in on a Butler team that plays games close. I would have liked to have beat the line move to -5 but I think Xavier brings a solid performance to the table today and not only wins but gets the cover. In addition Andrew Chrabascz will be out for Butler today, who is their third leading scorer averaging 11 points a game. This Butler team averages 2 points better then their opponents on the road this season. They will miss the points of Chrabascz today and because of that and Xavier’s solid play at home they pull away in the second have and cover.

Crack em!