Posted at 8:30 AM EST. Odds subject to change.

Pinnacle +11½ -106 BET365 +11½ -110 Sportsinteraction +11½ -110  888Sport +11½ -110 

Morehead State +11½ over Illinois

CHI Health Center Omaha - Omaha, NE

Men's Basketball Championship - East Region - 1st Round

Streaming: truTV

3:10 PM EST. Illinois enters the first round with a ton of baggage and the pressure of being the champions of the Big Ten (B1G). Let’s start with the baggage, which comes in the form of three straight NCAA Tournament appearances in which the Illini have been unable to escape the first weekend. As for the B1G Tournament, Illinois went through Ohio State, Nebraska, and Wisconsin to cut down the nets in Minneapolis last Sunday. You may have noticed that the Illini avoided a date with Purdue in the final, but that was because Wisconsin knocked out the Boilermakers in the semifinals.

Easier path or not, Illinois is overvalued here after winning a Power Six conference, and with that B1G win comes a pedigree that the talking heads eat up, as we’ve heard that Illinois is now battle-tested after running through the B1G and that they’ll benefit from that conference tournament victory. Really? What did the Illini gain from winning the B1G? They certainly didn’t benefit from their seeding by the selection committee in this tournament, where they stuck Illinois with a potentially unfavorable matchup against a team that is built to beat them.

Enter the Eagles of Morehead State, who bring a suitcase full of qualities we are looking for when looking for an underdog in this tournament. Off the top, the Eagles are well-coached, with Preston Spradlin, who has turned this unit into an elite transition defense that potentially could cause fits for Illinois, who loves to run up and down the court while not playing any defense of any kind. That’s not Morehead State, as Spradlin starts every practice he runs with a defensive closeout drill where they practice forcing bad three-point shots and then cleaning up those rebounds.

There are so many paths for Morehead State to cover this inflated number, and that includes shutting down Terrence Shannon Jr., who burst onto the national radar during the B1G Tournament. Everything Illinois does runs through the fifth-year guard, as his usage accounted for 33-35% of the Illini’s possessions in their conference tournament. As Shannon Jr. goes, the Illini will go, and if he goes cold, they go cold. With that in mind, it’s hard not to get the feeling that the Illini are already making excuses if they fail to make the Sweet 16 (again) with scorer Quincy Guerrier saying, "If we lose a game, then all of that was for nothing. We've got to make sure we'll be locked in. ... We worked pretty hard the whole year. We're going to have to respect Morehead State. There are a lot of upsets in March. We've got to make sure we play our basketball and be connected and work really hard to get that win."

Perhaps the Illini are uber-aware of their expectations and are locked in on the task at hand, but what happens if they go down a few possessions or double digits? Do the ghosts of the past haunt them? Regardless, this is just a bad deal all around for Illinois, and even if they do get past the Eagles, they’ll have a date with either BYU or Duquesne in the second round, and neither of those is an easy draw. There is so much pressure on Illinois here that it’s palpable. Upset alert.

Sherwood

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