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

Pinnacle +9½ -105 BET365 +9½ -110 Sportsinteraction +9½ -110  888Sport +9½ -110 

Duquesne +9½ over BYU

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

CHI Health Center Omaha - Omaha, NE

Streaming: truTV

12:40 PM EST. With a 23-win season and a place in the Top 25 (21) as March Madness begins, the Cougars of BYU’s trek to the Power Six and a spot in the Big 12 was a raging success. The Cougars would go 23-10 on the season, but with a conference mark of just 10-8, most of those wins came during non-conference play, where BYU played a very weak schedule that ranks just 317th of 362 graded Division I programs. Some of the weak wins the Cougs racked up include Houston Christian (353), SE Louisiana (303), Morgan State (332), Evansville (207), Fresno State (238), Denver (264), Georgia State (219), and Bellamine (315).

That slate of cupcakes did not serve the Cougars well during Big 12 play, as they lost games to those ranked sides in Texas Tech (twice by double digits), Iowa State, Houston, and Baylor, but they also lost to those teams that posted sub. 500 conference records such as Kansas State, Oklahoma, Cincinnati, and Oklahoma State. The Cougars actually lost by double digits to both Okie State and Cincinnati, who won four and seven games, respectively, in the Big 12 this season.

The Dukes of Duquesne punched their tickets to this party by winning the Atlantic-10 (A10), after knocking out VCU, St. Bonaventure, the #24 team in the nation Dayton, and Saint Louis along the way to that conference’s championship. While the Dukes making a run in the A-10 should have been the big news to come out of the weekend, head coach Keith Dambrot added a wrinkle to his team's tournament prospects, as he announced that he will retire after the Dukes wrap up their season, whenever that may be. Dambrot’s Dukes are ranked 28th nationally in defensive efficiency, but they’ve been even better than that over the last week, as they rank eighth defensively since February 15.

The selection committee and the schedule makers did the Cougars no favors here by pitting them against a pesky defensive team that is firing on all cylinders on that side of the ball in the second game of the day and a sleepy 11:40 AM Omaha (CST) time start, which is just 10:40 AM MST, the timezone in which the Cougars live and play. That early start could play right into the Dukes' hands, as they are a team that likes to limit 3-point chances, and when their opponents fire from long range, those shots are poor ones. The A-10 shot just 29.5% against the Dukes from three this season, which is four percent lower than the national average.

By the way, the Cougs live and die by the triple, with over 50% (51.4%) of their shots in Big 12 play coming from beyond the arc. The icing on the “bad matchup” cake is that the Cougars like to play at pace, ranking 85th in the nation in that department, while the Dukes play a plodding game that slows things down to a snail's pace (they rank 251st), which is conducive to covering inflated points. Furthermore, this line opened with the Cougs as a modest -7½-point favorite, but now they are spotting near double-digits depending on where you shop. This game has the potential to be the first bracket disruptor of this tournament, as the Dukes are very capable of winning this game outright, however, we’ll take the inflated points being offered up here and hope to see you at the pay window.

Sherwood

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