Posted at 9:30 AM EST. Odds subject to change.

Pinnacle -5½ -109 BET365 -5½ -110 Sportsinteraction -5½ -110   888Sport -5½ -110 

San Diego State -5½ -105 over Yale

Spokane Arena – Spokane, WA

NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Second Round

Streaming: TBS

9:40 PM EST. There are a couple moving parts to this play which consist of us “sticking with it” and a couple of reactions from the market from one set of results in the Round of 64.

To lead off, there is San Diego State who played on Friday and was one of the teams most heavily faded by the betting market in an illustrious #5 vs #12 match-up against UAB. Though the market was pounding the Blazers and scoffing up the points, Alabama-Birmingham managed to produce a seeing-eye cover in a four-point loss which saw the Blazers in position to not only cover but at one point threaten San Diego State’s prospects of survival. This only encourages the market to fade SDSU further here.

As a #13 seed, Yale staged an upset of #4 Auburn who came into this tournament as SEC Champion with a top-10 ranking overall in the polls. The market gave the Bulldogs virtually no chance against the Tigers who were priced as a 13-point pup at tipoff but the Ivy League Champions had other ideas. Yale completed the upset in a wild finish that saw the final tally settled by a mere basket despite Auburn leading by double digits past the midway point in the second half. As a result, all those that bet on Auburn ripped a ticket doing so are zig-zagging to the Bulldogs here and those that backed UAB and were rewarded are doubling-down in their fade of SDSU. The confluence of factors make the Aztecs one of the best value plays on the menu today. 

When reviewing the box score of San Diego State vs. UAB, the Aztecs led by as much as 12 as the game approached halftime and they were virtually better in every key category, except three-point shooting where the Blazers converted 35% of their attempts while San Diego State hit just 27.8% of their three-pointers. If one were to reverse these numbers for both parties, San Diego State wins this game by double digits and covers easily, which in turn would without question recalibrate the market’s assessment of these two sides. 

Yale stole an automatic bid to get here and were the third best team in the IVY League this past season while San Diego State was last year's national runner-up, led by arguably the most improved player in the country, Jaedon LeDee (21.1 PPG, 8.4 RPG). The Aztecs are top 10 in defensive efficiency for the third straight season. They guard the 3-point line as well as anyone and make opponents earn their points. We get the Aztecs at a true bargain here. 

Sherwood

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------