Posted at 4:30 PM EST. Odds subject to change.

Pinnacle +7 -111 BET365 +7 -110 Sportsinteraction  +7 -110  888Sport +7 -110 

B1G Tournament, Target Center, Minneapolis, MN

Michigan +7 over Penn State

Streaming: Peacock

9:00 PM EST. On the surface, the #14 Nittany Lions of Penn State look to be the superior side, as they post nearly twice as many wins (15-16) as the Wolverines of Michigan (8-23), but alas, those wins and losses do not tell the whole story of a long and winding season.

We’ll start with Penn State, who finished as the #11 seed in the Big Ten (B1G), with a 9-11 conference mark. That middling record is not the story here, as Penn State posted just a 6-5 non-conference record against a weak schedule that ranked just 302 (of 362 graded schools) in the country. The Nittany Lions posted non-conference wins over Delaware State (304), Lehigh (260), St. Francis (PA) (355), Le Moyne (301), and Rider (220). Oh, by the way, Penn State lost at home to Bucknell (276) by nine in addition to losses by double digits to VCU (84), Butler (65), and Texas A&M (48), and a home loss to Georgia Tech (127). The point is, that the Nittany Lions have feasted on cupcakes, and their win/loss record is inflated.

We’re not going to sugarcoat the eight-game losing streak the Wolverines are on or their 3-17 mark in the B1G, but we are going to point out that none of this is privileged information, and the market is eating it up. The Wolverines opened as just a +4-point pooch, but an unsuspecting market has eaten that up, and now Michigan is taking back the inflated price you see now. The points the Wolverines were being offered were already generous once the Nittany Lions were dissected, but now we are in a position to take back inflated points on top of inflated points. Those inflated points present a potentially profitable opportunity, that even if we have to hold our noses, we are not going to pass up.

Sherwood

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