Below are my picks on four games for the 2015 Sweet 16. Good luck and enjoy what should be an excellent weekend of basketball.

Season Record: 25-20

NCAA Tournament Record: 5-3

Kentucky -13.5 vs West Virginia

When I break down this game, I’m having a very hard time coming up with any reasons to back the Mountaineers other than a perceived coaching edge to Huggins over Calipari. But, I grew up in Cincinnati, and a lot of those wins that Huggins had over Calipari, Huggins had the more talented team at Cincinnati when he was routinely coaching top 25 teams and Calipari was building the Memphis program into what it was on the tail end before he left, so I’m going to take that record with a grain of salt.

As far as the X’s and O’s are concerned here, I don’t know where you can possibly find an edge to back West Virginia given their style of play. West Virginia loves to press and throw bodies at you for 40 minutes, but as it has been duly noted all season long, Kentucky’s depth has been the backbone of their success along with their defense all season long. Calipari has known that this game was coming, and I think you can see that with his increased propensity to run Tyler Ulis out there in an extended workload, where he played 34 minutes against Cincinnati. The platoon system is a thing of the past and Calipari has been way more apt to put the best lineup on the floor given the matchup, and he has played Andrew Harrison along with Ulis quite a bit in the last few weeks, where both have gelled well, and Andrew hasn’t had a turnover in his last three games.

If you take a look at Kentucky’s schedule, they played five games against teams that throw a similar pressure defensively as West Virginia, and this is how Kentucky has fared:

Arkansas (20th in turnover percentage) W: 78-63, W: 84-67

Tennessee: (19th in turnover percentage) W: 66-48

Louisville (27th in turnover percentage) W: 58-50

Eastern Kentucky (2nd in turnover percentage) W: 82-49

I think it’s been pretty well illustrated that if you’re going to beat Kentucky you’ll want the game to be played with as few of possessions and as slow of a tempo as possible. The real X factor in handicapping this game is trying to decipher what ol’ Huggy Bear is going to do with his team. I have a hard time seeing him completely flipping the script on what has gotten his team here to this point and backing his pressure off, but with Huggins you never know.

Another aspect of this betting matchup I found interesting, is that in the NCAA Tournament so far, underdogs receiving greater than 50% of spread bets are 5-10 ATS. As I write this, West Virginia is currently receiving 69% of bets. As the old gambling commandments state, “Beware of the Trendy Dog.” I think Kentucky cruises to an easy win Thursday in the nightcap at Quicken Loans Arena.

 

Wichita State vs Notre Dame UNDER 137.5

The more I broke this game down the more and more I found myself seeing that the Under had some value. At the current price, these teams have to play into the 70’s for this to sail over and I just don’t see it. I think at first glance it could be easy to see the total going over since we just saw Wichita State put a clinic on against Indiana and Kansas offensively, and Notre Dame is more than capable offensively. But what Wichita State has prided themselves on for years under Gregg Marshall is their defensive toughness, and after seeing how Butler was able to disrupt Notre Dame’s offensive rhythm being physical with the Irish, I would expect a similar attack from the Shockers on Thursday night.

When you get down to individual matchups, they slant towards the under in my opinion as well. Notre Dame has some great on-ball defenders in Demetrius Jackson and Jerian Grant, and I think both of them will be able to slow down the penetration of Fred Van Vleet and Ron Baker if he opts to do so. I also don’t think the value of Steve Vasturia and Pat Connaughton can be underestimated defensively either. Vasturia locked down Butler sharpshooter Kellen Dunham, and combined the Irish held Butler’s two biggest perimeter threats in Kellen Dunham and Alex Barlow to a combined 10 points. Roosevelt Jones was able to carry Butler in that game, but I don’t see any one on the Shockers roster capable of replicating the matchup nightmare that Rose Jones was for Notre Dame.

When you play a total, you have to consider the transition buckets, which I think will be vary sparse in this game. Neither team turns it over, due in large part to excellent guard play on each side. This game is too close to call for me at the current line of Wichita State -2, but I see this game being played in the 60’s, with each team having to get their buckets from well-executed half court offensive sets.

 

NC State vs Louisville -3

If you would have told me a month ago that I’d be backing Louisville as a favorite in the Sweet 16, I would have probably been perplexed. But the Cardinals are turning a corner and finding a different gear, as usual with teams coached by Rick Pitino. The cliche gets beaten into the ground each and every March, but you absolutely cannot discount what Rick Pitino (and Tom Izzo, obviously) can do with their teams come March. Louisville just beat a very good team in Northern Iowa to get here and a really pesky Cal Irvine team that wasn’t an ideal matchup for them, and I think the Cards are playing with a lot of confidence right now.

These two teams played in the regular season of course in a game that NC State won 74-65. Cat Barber and the rest of the Wolfpack had no issues with Louisville’s pressure. I really don’t expect Pitino to run the same sort of pressure out there on Friday night, and expect him to make this more of a half-court game and prevent NC State from getting out and running, a style they are very comfortable with.

I’m not a huge believer in trends, but some are just too obvious to ignore. In revenge games, Rick Pitino is 21-5 ATS at Louisville. This goes along with my comments above about Pitino. I’m going to swallow the points and back the Cards.

 

Utah +5.5 vs Duke

It takes a lot of guts to get in front of Duke given what we’ve seen from them at times, perhaps having the highest ceiling in terms of overall play in the country outside of Kentucky, but I’m going to get behind the Utes in a game I’m projecting to come down to the wire.

Duke has been a machine at times, but they’ve also shown they do have areas where they are vulnerable. To start, I don’t know if Jahlil Okafor has seen a big man that will challenge him as much as Jakob Poeltl in quite some time. I am really looking forward to seeing these two go at in the post on Friday night and think it could be one of the better individual matchups of the tournament, and it’s scary that both of these guys are freshman. Which brings me to next point, Duke’s youth. Outside of Quinn Cook, the Blue Devil’s three leading scorers are all freshman in Okafor, Winslow, and Jones. Yes, Duke has been in some huge games this season already and they’ve performed very well, but the pressure of the NCAA tournament is a completely different animal.

The Utes are definitely the underdog in this game, no question about it. But I think the national perception of Utah has quickly forgotten what this team is capable of. This is a Utah team that finished second in the Pac 12 to a beast of an Arizona team, and is led by a senior guard in Delon Wright, who might be one of the most under-appreciated players in the country. I think this Duke team can absolutely be scored upon, which has been demonstrated by them ranking 131st in points allowed defensivley. It’s a big IF, but if Utah can find a way to neutralize Okafor a bit and force the guards from Duke to beat them, I like them to be in this game down to the wire and possibly pull the upset.