NCAA Basketball 10 Best Bets for 2022 NCAA Tournament First Round
By Greg Waddell
LSU -4.5 vs. Iowa State
At first, I was annoyed I had to pick a winner in this game – the team that can’t score vs. the team that doesn’t have a coach, but upon further research, I am all over LSU. The Tigers possess the 5th best defense in the country (KP), and prior to this season under Will Wade, they never fielded a top 50 defense in his entire tenure at LSU. The reason they are elite defensively wasn’t coaching or scheme – it was personnel and these players, led by Tari Eason, aren’t going anywhere.
Iowa St. finished the season 0-3 down the stretch, including two games where they scored 36 and 41 points. The Cyclones turn the ball over a ton, LSU forces the 2nd most turnovers in the country. Stylistically, this is a horrible matchup for Iowa St., and even without Will Wade, I like LSU to win comfortably.
Colgate +7.5 vs. Wisconsin
Is Johnny Davis healthy? That’s what we need to know – in the Big Ten Tournament he certainly looked hobbled as the Badgers lost their first-round game to Michigan St. Colgate is the type of team that can pull an upset – they have the 2nd best 3-point shooting percentage as a team in all of college basketball, and they showed that when they hung 100 points on Syracuse’s 2-3 zone and beat the Orange by 15 points.
Wisconsin is just okay at guarding the three-point line – 97th in 3-point percentage defense (KP). The Badgers went 8-1 this season against non-top 100 opponents, but the last 6 wins in those games all came by single digits, many against teams that are much worse than Colgate. I like the toothpaste brand to brush Brad Davison’s career out of college basketball.