Isn’t *every* Big East basketball game a brawl?  In any case, this should be a good one as Georgetown heads to Kentucky to take on the Louisville Cardinals.  The Hoyas are 8-6 in conference while Louisville is 9-5.  Barring a late season collapse, both teams are *probably* going to get a NCAA tourney invite, but it never hurts to beef up the resume.  Then again, there are at least 7 teams in the conference that probably deserve to go based on their record, with several more ‘on the bubble’.  Never a good idea to leave it in the hands of the NCAA selection committee.

GEORGETOWN VS. LOUISVILLE:

Revenge is one of the more overrated concepts in sports betting, but in this case there may be something of a payback motive.  Louisville came into the Hoyas’ building last year and dropped a 18 point beatdown on them.  That’s not just a loss for Georgetown, that’s a humiliation.

As we’ve talked about extensively, taking the points in competitive conferences is never a bad strategy and there’s a lot to like about the Hoyas in this spot.  More specifically, Louisville is a horrible pointspread team in several salient categories.  The Cardinals are 8-14 ATS overall, 6-13 ATS as a favorite, 4-8 ATS at home, 5-9 ATS in conference and 6-11 ATS against teams with winning records.  What that suggests is a team that is overvalued due to the ‘name’ recognition of the program but doesn’t cover margins.  And for a sports betting enthusiast, that’s a good team to look to play against.

Public perception in sports betting is a funny thing.  The public’s ‘take’ on a team changes over time and usually not in reaction to anything happening on the court or a team’s pointspread performance.  For a long time, Georgetown was an ‘overvalued’ team by the betting public based on their success during the Patrick Ewing, Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo and Allen Iverson eras.  Of course these players are long gone, and when they left the Hoyas went through some down years.  During that time, they became an ‘undervalued’ team.  They’ve got a very good team this year, but for whatever reason still haven’t recaptured the confidence of the betting public.  That’s fine with us, since it gets us better line value.  Hoyas win outright here.

PLAY GEORGETOWN +4 OVER LOUISVILLE