Ivy League Title on the Line – Cornell at Dartmouth
BetUS NCAA Basketball Betting Odds: CORNELL -9.5
Here are some of the NCAA basketball betting trends as they relate to this matchup:
* CORN has won four of its last five games SU
* CORN has covered eight of its last 12 games* CORN has played four of its last five games OVER the total
* CORN has won four of its last six road games SU
* DART has won five of its last seven games SU
* DART has covered six of its last seven games
* DART has played six of its last eight games UNDER the total
* DART has covered four of its last five home games
* DART has played its last five home games UNDER the total
Also…
* CORN has won the last seven meetings SU
* CORN has covered five of the last seven meetings
* Four of the last six meetings have gone OVER the total
* CORN has won and covered the last three meetings as the road team
* CORN has had the shooting edge in each of the last five meetings
* CORN has had the rebounding edge in each of the last seven meetings
* CORN has made more three-pointers in each of the last five meetings
Cornell has a chance to clinch the Ivy League title and an automatic berth in the NCAA’s this weekend. They won’t have an easy road to get there, as Dartmouth demonstrated just two weeks ago that it could hang in with the best team in the conference, and do so in enemy territory to boot. On February 14 Dartmouth extended Cornell into double overtime before losing 79-76, but they held the Big Red to less than 42% shooting and fought tooth-and-nail on the boards.
Leading scorer Alex Barnett had 22 points in that game, and that is just one outstanding game in a super-hot sequence for him. Barnett has averaged 22.9 points in his last nine games. It is true that Dartmouth hits only 64% from the line, and doesn’t have as much in the way of three-point marksmanship or scoring balance (Barnett is the only player averaging more than 7.3 ppg). But if Dartmouth can do the same kind of job on defense that it did before, it can slow the major strength Cornell has, which is its accuracy (47% FG’s).
The thing about the Ivy League is that there is no post-season conference tournament, so that adds an extra dimension of desperation for all the teams that have to chase the leaders as the season winds down. Dartmouth is not out of the race just yet; we really expect the Big Green to sell out here and leave it all on the court. They don’t back down, having come from behind to tie the first meeting in both regulation and the first overtime. There is actually a depth advantage of sorts here, as the Big Green has eleven players logging more than 10 minutes a game. We’ll take the points with Dartmouth, the 9.5-point home underdog in the BetUS NCAA college basketball sports betting odds.
