Thursday's Plays--A Three-Pack !!

Keith · #1 03-12-2009, 06:50 AM

first the re-cap. Split again yesterday (2 days in a row), winning with St. Louis and losing with UCF. Now 14-5-1 for my last 20 posted plays.

For Thursday I like 3 plays. One in the day and two at night. Let's get to it.

First at 1:00 pm I like the Golden Hurricanes of Tulsa to smash Rice. I will lay the 9 points. Tulsa is a very good team, 22-9 with an RPI of 61. They beat Rice by 10 points only 5 days ago. The problem for Tulsa is that they are not likely to beat Memphis in the Conference USA tourney, so they are looking at an at-large bid. Which means they need to impress today. Rice is the perfect opponent for that. Rice is 10-21 on the year with an RPI of 224. They are coming off a hard fought battle with Marshall yesterday (winning by 1), but they are going to get run out of the gym this afternoon.

Tonight I like Dayton to cover against Richmond (the line I see right now is 4). Dayton is one of my sleeper teams. This team is, at least, Elite Eight bound. They are 25-6 with an RPI of 23. They beat Richmond by 6 on 2/14. Richmond is a decent team, but they played last night and they are going up against a rested Dayton team. Richmond is 18-14 on the year with an RPI of 131. Simply put, they are not as good as Dayton. Flyers roll the Spiders.

Lastly, also for tonight, I like UTEP +1 from Houston. Houston played last night while UTEP got to rest. The teams split the meetings this year, with UTEP winning on the road by 7 on 1/28 and Houston winning on the road by 8 on 1/14. They have similar records, UTEP at 19-11 and Houston at 20-10. UTEP has the better RPI however, 79 to 93. This one is more of a gut play than anything else. I like the Miners to get the job done tonight. UTEP +1.

Thursday's plays are: Tulsa -9, Dayton -4 and UTEP +1.

P.S.--please note these are overnight lines. I do not see lines up yet at scoresandodds, Pinny, etc... I will update later.