BEST LINES:  Pinnacle + 7 -103 Bookmaker +7 -110SportsInteraction +7 -110 5DIMES +7 -110

Posted at 1:45 PM EST.

9:00 PM EST. Alabama is coming off arguably its best performance of the season after destroying #17 Tennessee 78-50 at home in Tuscaloosa on Saturday. That W was 'Bama's fifth over a ranked squad this season with Texas A&M, Auburn, Oklahoma and Florida being the others. Six games remain on Alabama's schedule. After tonight the Tide have two straight games against ranked competition in Kentucky and rival Auburn. Those two games will be 'Bama's final attempt before the SEC Tournament to improve its March Madness seeding. The Crimson Tide are 31st in ESPN's RPI rankings, and CBS Sports' Jerry Palm considers them an eight-seed in his bracketology breakdown. However, for all the highs this team has had this season, the Crimson Tide has been woefully inconsistent after loses to Mississippi State, Missouri, Ole Miss, Georgia and Vanderbilt already in 2018. That negative trait has head coach Avery Johnson searching for answers, "We’ve failed several times in this area. Since I’m a real, true psychologist and not a basketball coach, I’m going to go back and look through some of my psychological journals and see what I can come up with."

The Tigers are on the bubble, but trending in the right direction after a win over Ole Miss last time out. LSU sits 50th in RPI, but are currently not predicted to crack the field of 68 come March, so a strong finish to the regular season and a good showing in the SEC Tournament will be critical to its quest to go dancing. A prior loss this season to Alabama might scare the market off the Tigers, but it’s hard to beat a conference rival twice in a row even when they are having a bad season, which LSU is not. The Tigers are battle-tested after playing the 27th toughest schedule in the nation according to KenPom. When these two schools played just a month ago, the Tigers were spotting four points, and now they are taking back nearly twice that. That's value. Two of the Tigers remaining games come against schools that are ahead of them in the RPI, and they know it. A win over 'Bama tonight will do much more for LSU than a loss would do to hurt the Tide. The Tigers catch Alabama in a great look-ahead spot here, as the Tide are between games with ranked schools and they blew out Tennessee, totally inflating their price in the market. Taking back these sweet points is half our bet. The other half will be the money line.

Therefore the plays are as follows:

LSU +7 for 1.03 units to win 1

LSU +274 for 1 unit

Open an account today at Pinnacle Sports and take advantage of their -104 style pricing on sides and totals, which is 60% better than other sportsbooks.