UCLA +8.5 vs Gonzaga
No Cinderella this year in March Madness, but UCLA remains the highest seed in this tourney (#11) and Vegas oddsmakers know they are going to get a ton of action on the Zags here and have inflated this line to take advantage of that, and also the fact these are west coast teams which also attract attention at the counter in Vegas money-wise. Vegas opened with Gonzaga as a point favorite and the line has dropped to 8.5 as of Tuesday.
UCLA gave highly respected and highly touted Arizona team all they wanted in the PAC 12 Tourney, losing by 6 to one of the nations best teams. They beat a solid SMU team on a gift from the refers no doubt, but the fact remains they won and beat a damn good 4 loss team there and also they just flat out beat up UAB in the round 2 and did not spend and extraordinarily amount of energy to do so. Any Steve Alford coached team as we all know is going to be fundamentally sound and have good guards.
Gonzaga is a damn good team, I have no doubts about that at all, but the fact remains when they step up in class and have to play someone above the pay grade of a St. Marys they struggle, and their record against PAC 12 teams is not impressive going just 3-7-1 ATS their last 11 against PAC teams. In comparison to their round 1 game laying 17 points to North Dakota State, a game they won by 10 points, laying over 8 here against a team who has nothing to lose and is a well coached and battle tested team, I will take the points all day long. Nothing comes easy this time of the tourney.
UCLA and the points