At long last, Saturday is here and our dreadful week of boring college hoops is over.  No more pretending like you CARE about FAU at Miami!  No more tweeting among yourselves as to whether you should eat the nine points with Bradley, and no more wondering if the fact you considered laying a few bucks and watching Middle Tennessee vs. Belmont means you just might have a problem (you don’t – MTSU is legit, and that was a pretty fun game.  Hey, don’t judge me either…), it’s ALL GOOD.

It’s BALL DAY!  And the schedule is absolutely loaded from noon to midnight.

Before I venture in with the picks, just wanted to invite you all to join in the conversation anytime with digs, tips, feedback and reasonably polite insults via Twitter @TheMarchManiacs.  It’s been a great start to the season, posting a 16-5 ATS mark for The Saturday Edge and a nice 39-14 ATS mark across all my published platforms.   Hopefully we can keep the good times rolling in the Holiday season!

Today’s schedule is all about the glamour, and no game is more glamorous than Kentucky and North Carolina getting together in Las Vegas.  That game, deservedly, will garner all the headlines, but there are some pretty fantastic games a little under the radar as well.  For those of your feeling nostalgic, Syracuse and Georgetown should bring a fond misty glaze to your eyes.  Forget the fact that both are unranked, it’s the Cuse and the Hoyas in the Carrier Dome, dang it!

Drift a little further off the ranked-team radar and you can enjoy some nice matchups like Memphis and Oklahoma in a game neither can afford to take on the chin of their thin bubble dreams.  Arkansas and Texas meet up in Houston; the Hogs are 8-1 but skeptics (ME) remain.  The Longhorns are 5-4 and CAN’T take any more pre-con losses at this point. Ohio State very nearly upset Virginia in their own building, but has also lost to FAU.  How will they fare against UCLA? (3pm on CBS)

Even further off the grid, 9-1 Kansas State facing 8-2 Colorado State is an interesting game. Northern Iowa at Iowa is an underratedly fierce rivalry.  Dayton at Northwestern in the United Center in Chicago is fantastic basketball, and Middle Tennessee (those Blue Raiders, again) at VCU is about as good as 2016 mid-major basketball gets (apologies to the A10 – you are NOT a mid-major league, but with the defections of Temple, Xavier, Butler, etc., the league FEELS a half-pace behind the true big boys)

My point is simply – today is GREAT.  Enjoy it.  Not just for the splendor or the day, but also because it is going to have to tide you over until the end of the year, because this is just about the end of big time days until conference play/New Year’s Eve offers up another well-stocked bounty.

Let’s find some winners.

 

TODAY’S FAVORITE PLAYS:

Memphis Tigers at Oklahoma Sooners -10.5

This game reeks of “what used to be” but is still a slightly better matchup than Vegas seems to think.  Memphis has continued to slide and slide since John Calipari headed to Lexington.  At first it seemed like a small blip, but it is getting close to time to accept this just is no longer a high-major elite program.  Some of the problem is conference affiliation as the world shifted around them and they got left behind in the AAC.  Some of it is the inevitable impossibility of replacing Coach Cal.  Either way, Memphis has slid significantly and is another loss today away from looking like a team that needs to win their conference tournament to get an NCAA Tournament bid.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s slide this season is understandable.  They lost four four-year starters including Naismith Award Winner, Buddy Hield, so this is clearly a rebuilding year for Lon Kruger.  They enter today at 6-3 with a good win over Clemson and a pair of close losses to Northern Iowa and Wichita State (so they are no better than third in the Valley…) and a blowout loss last weekend at Wisconsin (one of my very few losses on the season).  Aside from that, their best wins are Orel Roberts and Tulane.  Oklahoma might wind up being a decent squad this year, but laying this huge pile of points in a game that feels like a pretty even matchup seems a little bold.

Memphis enters at 7-3 with losses to Providence, @Ole Miss, and Monmouth.  All the losses were close and competitive.  They own wins over Iowa and UAB.  Like OU, it isn’t a great resume, but there is nothing on there to show me this team can’t compete.

I like a good game today.  Both get a chance to show their wares on CBS this afternoon, which will be a rare opportunity for these programs this season.  I think they’ll put on an appropriate show.

I’ll gladly take the points and the Tigers.

MY PICK:  Memphis Tigers +10.5

 

Ohio State Buckeyes vs. UCLA Bruins -8.5  (Game @ Las Vegas)

How FUN is Vegas going to be today??  Ohio State and UCLA followed by the best non-conference neutral court game of the year, North Carolina vs. Kentucky.  When this thing was scheduled, UCLA and Ohio State looked like the clear undercard.  Then UCLA stormed into Rupp Arena and nearly hung 100 points in a winning effort.  The glamour is back in Westwood, and I expect the Arena to be buzzing from the opening tip-off today – especially with NBA scouts.

In a Sesame Street-like “one of these things is not like the others” Ohio State will bring a dramatically inferior roster to the party.  Yes, they competed REALLY well in Virginia; a tough place to play and a likely top three or four seed come March.  But as good as Virginia is, they are a far cry from UCLA athletically and next-level talent wise.

I think UCLA overwhelms the Buckeyes today.  In totality, Ohio State’s early season is pretty mediocre.  They opened eyes with the UVA effort.  They made those same eyes nearly blind in a gross home loss to FAU (for context, FAU was a 21-point dog to Miami last night).  The wins over Providence and UConn are nice.  The loss to FAU is ugly and the close games with North Carolina Central and Fairleigh Dickenson are concerning.

The pretty interesting thing about UCLA is the meteoric rise to stardom of Lonzo Ball.  I am part of the hype-machine, admittedly, Tweeting “Jason Kidd 2.0” well before the hype got steamrolling.  But the best freshman in the whole country performance-wise so far this season might be his teammate TJ Leaf.  Leaf is averaging 18/9 and shooting 67.5% from the floor.  With Leaf AND Ball doing what they are doing, Bryce Alford has settled nicely (and more efficiently) into a spot-up shooter and supporting scorer role and last year’s leading scorer, Aaron Holiday is the best sixth man in the country and it’s not particularly close.  They have five guys averaging over 13.9 points a game and this team is getting better and better every outing.  They followed up the Kentucky revelation with a 102-84 win over Michigan in what could have EASILY been a trap game.

I think Ohio State gets dump-trucked today in an electric environment and another glamorous showcase for the nation’s most exciting young team.  (Oh, and I gave you them at 50:1 in the preseason column…hope you listened!)

MY PICK:  UCLA Bruins -8.5

 

There are so, so many games to pick from today.  The two above are my favorite plays, but here are three other leans for today.

Notre Dame +3 over Purdue

Indiana -3 over Butler

Middle Tennessee +4.5 over VCU

 

Good luck everyone – and be sure to holler @TheMarchManiacs on Twitter to continue the conversation!