Posted at 4:00 PM EST odds are subject to change.

Pinnacle  -8 -112 BET365  -8 -110  SportsInteraction -8 -110  888Sport -8 -110

First Community Arena at the Vadalabene Center, Edwardsville, IL

Streaming: ESPN+

SIU Edwardsville -8 over Little Rock

8:00 PM EST. Playing the 188th ranked non-conference schedule in America, Little Rock has nine wins in 29 tries this year while ranking 331st in the country out of 363 Division I schools. Both KenPom and BartTorvick, who use more than just wins and losses to rank teams, rank Little Rock as one of the worst programs in the country. This is a Little Rock team with horrible shooting percentages right across the board and with one of the worst turnover ratios in America. Little Rock has one game left after this one. They already played their final home game this past Saturday when they beat Eastern Illinois in OT, no less. Asking this cupcake to compete on the road here in this utterly meaningless contest for them after an OT win to close out its home schedule is an exercise in futility.

The Cougars of SIU Edwardsville are the bargain of the night. SIUE is coming off back-to-back-to-back losses to Eastern Illinois, UT Martin and Tennessee State, thus, the Cougars have dropped three in a row. Furthermore, SIUE has lost five in a row against the spread and has just one cover over its last 11 games. It gets even better. You see, two games ago, SIUE was playing at UT Martin. At that time UT Martin was 13-1 at home and in second place in the OVC yet oddsmakers made SIUE just a +1½-point favorite. That’s a seriously telling sign of how much respect oddsmakers have for the host here. They expected SIUE to go into UT Martin’s barn and beat a team that posted a 13-1 home mark. Incidentally, when UT Martin went into Little Rock as a 6-point favorite, they beat the Trojans by 17. Now SIUE is a mere bucket more at home then UT martin was on the road at Little Rock. SIUE needs to get right-sided before the Conference Tournament starts next week. It could not have handpicked a more ripe opponent.

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