Golden Gophers head coach Richard Pitino faces a Louisville program that fired his father back in 2017 amid a federal bribery investigation. The NCAA gets a lot wrong, but they do know March Madness drama. Pitino’s Minnesota squad enters the tournament 21-13 overall and 17-17 against the spread. After missing the 2018 tournament, first-year head coach Chris Mack helped lead Louisville to a No. 7 seed. The Cardinals finished the regular season 20-13 SU and 17-14-2 ATS.
Although it has lost eight of its last 12 games, Louisville played the eighth-toughest schedule according to Sagarin’s strength of schedule rating. The Cards opened as 6-point favorites, but the line dipped to Cardinals -5, while the point total opened at 133.5 before it jumped to 136.
While Louisville may have lost eight of its past 12 games, those losses have been to elite ACC teams like North Carolina, Duke, Virginia and Florida State. Meanwhile, the Gophers’ 12-2 non-conference record was muted by the fact they finished a pedestrian 9-11 in the Big Ten Conference. Plus, they are just 3-7 straight up against teams with winning records.
Even if the game is close down the stretch, which we know many tournament games tend to be, Minnesota’s Achilles heel at the charity stripe is going to cost it a cover. I’ll take Louisville -5 and with the way the Cards and Gophers have struggled to put up points away from their home court this season, UNDER 136 looks delicious.
Minnesota is 3-7 SU in its last 10 games vs teams with winning records.away The total has gone OVER in three of Minnesota’s last four games in the first round of the playoffs.away The total has gone UNDER in six of Louisville’s last seven games vs the Big Ten.home