There are few things in sports more fun than watching the Duke basketball team lose, especially when it’s during March Madness. Even more fun is watching Duke lose in a cataclysmic choke job that is literally unprecedented over the last 40 years of the college basketball tournament, and that’s exactly what the University of Houston accomplished on Saturday night.
Trailing by 14 points deep into the second half, and trailing by 6 points with under a minute to go, the Coogs rallied for an improbably 70-67 win over Duke to carry Kelvin Sampson to his first ever NCAA men’s finals as ahead coach. Just how close to tournament death were the Coogs? Well, consider this:
Couldn’t have happened to a more self-important, pompous basketball program. The only thing that makes me sad is that their program patriarch, Coach K, was only there as a spectator, and not experiencing this choke job as the head coach. That would have been epic.
So, now it’s onto the finals Monday night in San Antonio, and Kelvin Sampson’s squad will fica off against a Florida team that overcame an eight point halftime deficit to beat Auburn in the other semifinal game. Here are my best bets and pick for the game outcome on Monday night:
Walter Clayton, Jr. UNDER 18.5 points scored
Clayton has been the best player in this tournament thus far. Nobody has hit more big shots than him. Ask UConn, ask Texans Tech, or ask Auburn. The latter two were Clayton’s foes in the Elite Eight and Final Four, respectively, and he torched both for 30-plus points, the first player to do that since Larry Bird in 1979. So why on earth am I going UNDER 18.5 points? Well, perhaps you haven’t heard, but this Houston team plays defense, perhaps better than any team in the country. Their style of defense does a great job of getting the ball out of the hands of playmakers, which, combined with the Coogs’ ability to slow the tempo and limit possessions, make me feel good about taking the UNDER here. .
L.J. Cryer OVER 2.5 three pointers +115
Cryer was on fire Saturday night, scoring 26 points with 6 of 9 shooting from three point range, and was the only thing keeping the Coogs within striking distance for much of the night, until the big comeback at the end of the game. To make more than 2.5 three pointers, you need to be shooting plenty of threes, and Cryer has shot eight or more three point attempts in four of Houston’s five tournament games. Good news? He’s actually knocking them down at a 45 percent clip. Houston’s been living off of threes in the tournament, and Cryer’s been at the forefront of that. Expect the same on Monday night.
FINALS PICK: Houston +1.5 over Florida
So if I have the Gators’ best player with an UNDER prop bet for points, and the Coogs; best player with an OVER on three pointers made, that signals a game script that favors Houston. I just trust this team. The defensive intensity will never wane, and as we learned against Duke, they will fight with every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears, till the very end. Additionally, if the game is close late, they’ve got shooters in Crier, Emanuel Sharp, and Milos Uzan who can knock down big shots. Crier is a nice pick for Most Outstanding Player, too, at +130.
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