Two of the best programs in the history of college basketball square off once again on Tuesday night. Kansas and Duke travel to Las Vegas to play each other in the Terry's Chocolate Vegas Showdown. There is no shortage of star power in this one, as the best freshman in recent memory faces off against one of the most consistently dominant players over the past few years.
Here are my favorite bets for this clash of titans.
Kansas +3 (-110)
It's Feast Week, which means a couple different things. First, it means a ton of really good matchups in college basketball. Second, it means a bunch neutral-court games for said good matchups. Now, I'm no betting expert that makes a living off of this stuff, but there is one rule I live by almost religiously when it comes to college basketball.
In what should be a close matchup on a neutral court, I side with the experienced and proven team.
In this case, that leans towards the Jayhawks for multiple different reasons. First and most importantly, their starting lineup contains four seniors (two of which are in their fifth season) and a junior. Two of their three main bench players are also juniors. On the other hand, Duke's starting unit features three freshmen, a sophomore, and a junior. They do have an experienced bench, with two juniors and a senior making up a majority of their reserve minutes, but the edge is still in favor of Kansas.
The second big experience advantage for the Jayhawks comes from the sideline. Bill Self has accumulated 815 wins as a head coach. Jon Scheyer has just 58. Self is also excellent against Top 25 teams, winning 64% of those games. Scheyer is 5-8 against ranked teams in his 2+ years as head coach. When it comes down to crunch time, Self is one of the very best at drawing up plays to get his team a basket when they need one. If this game is close in the final minutes, I trust Self to make the right calls more than Scheyer.
Cooper Flagg Over 8.5 Rebounds (-120)
Let me start by saying that Cooper Flagg is a phenomenal player. He is well on his way to being an All-American and the first pick in next year's NBA Draft. However, he has never seen a defender quite like KJ Adams.
There isn't any singular aspect of Flagg's game that Adams hasn't seen and defended before, he just might not have seen all of the aspects put into one player. Adams can defend on the perimeter and in the post. Flagg has a couple inches on him, but Adams has shown more than enough times that he can play taller than his 6-foot-7 frame.
One of the few things that Adams doesn't do well is rebound. He has never averaged more than 4.6 rebounds in a season and has hit double-digit rebounds in just three of his 112 collegiate games. He has recorded more than four rebounds in just 27% of those games.
Cooper Flagg, on the other hand, is averaging nine rebounds so far this season and has hit double digits twice already. His low number for rebounds this season is seven, which he hit twice. One of those games, though, was his very first game and a 34-point blowout win. I wouldn't be surprised if Flagg topped his career-high (11) against the Jayhawks, especially if Adams is bottling him up in the scoring department.