With apologies to David Bowie.  The college basketball betting slate at your local sportsbooks heats up on Thursday with a couple of good SEC battles, including Georgia at Vanderbilt.  Vandy is the far superior team in terms of wins and losses–all you need to know about that is the Commodores are 20-6, while Georgia is 12-13.  But as you’ve all learned by now, SU wins and losses can only tell you so much about the financial ‘game within a game’ that us sports betting enthusiasts are concerned with.

GEORGIA VS. VANDERBILT

We’ve said it a lot about NHL hockey, but it applies to every sport–styles make fights or, in this case, make games.  Georgia’s W/L record isn’t much to write home about but they’ve been a great pointspread investment this season.  They play a banging, physical style and put up a good effort on most nights.  The result is a 14-9 ATS mark overall, 9-5 ATS as an underdog and perhaps the most impressive of all a 9-3 ATS mark in conference play.

Vanderbilt is definitely a good team, but they aren’t particularly big or tough.  They also have a tendency to not bring their ‘A Game’ against weaker opponents, as evidenced by a 0-3-1 ATS mark against teams with losing records.  These two teams played in early February, with Georgia winning outright by 14.  In theory, you might suggest this is a ‘revenge spot’ but the Commodores are only 3-3 ATS in ‘payback’ situations this year.  Vanderbilt is off a tough game against Kentucky where they played well but lost by 2 and there’s a potential they’ll come out flat here.  The rest of their schedule is tricky–a good Florida team, a capable Arkansas team and an enigmatic South Carolina team–further increasing the possibility of a flat effort here.  Vandy has failed to cover in 5 of their L7 games, while Georgia has been a veritable ATM machine of late–13 pointspread covers in their L17 games.

Georgia may not get another SU win, but they’ll make life difficult enough for Vandy’s less physical forwards and keep this within the number.  Unless a written test is involved, in which case it’ll be Vandy by a rout.

PLAY GEORGIA +12 OVER VANDERBILT