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March Madness Sweet 16 predictions and tips

Pick #1: Houston Cougars -8.5 vs Purdue Boilermakers (-115)
Pick #2: Arizona Wildcats +9.5 vs Duke Blue Devils (-115)
Pick #3: Kentucky Wildcats vs Tennessee Volunteers Under 144.5 (-110)

Houston -8.5 over Purdue (-115)

For our first best bet of the Sweet 16 slate, let’s lay the points with the Houston Cougars against the Purdue Boilermakers.

Given that this contest is being played at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, this is something of a home game for Purdue. However, that doesn’t dissuade our expert from backing the better team in a game where Houston’s physicality and dominance on the glass should win out.

These teams have taken very different paths to get to this point, with Purdue knocking off a couple of double-digit seeds while Houston had to go through an under-seeded Gonzaga team in the Round of 32.

In fact, Gonzaga profiles as a better team than Purdue according to the predictive metrics and we’re inclined to agree.

The Boilermakers’ offense is excellent, but this Houston defense is the best in the nation by all accounts, making this Purdue’s stiffest test yet.

Additionally, this Purdue defense is possibly the worst unit remaining in the tournament, particularly when it comes to defending the rim (341st in two-point defense per BartTorvik).

Ultimately, Houston should establish itself as the better team over the first 20 minutes and win this one comfortably.

Arizona Wildcats +9.5 over Duke Blue Devils (-115)

For our second pick in the Sweet 16, we’ll be backing Arizona to keep things within single digits against the top-seeded Duke Blue Devils in the East Region.

Duke has looked like a juggernaut in this tournament, but this will be the toughest matchup it has faced to this point by a considerable margin.

Arizona has the athletes to hang with the Blue Devils’ elite talent and the Wildcats are also clicking at the right time, having won four of their last five games and playing some of their best defense of the season in that span.

The difficulty of a full Big 12 conference slate has seemed to strengthen this Wildcats team and given them belief heading into the postseason, and they should be able to hang in this game with their top-10 offense (BartTorvik), excellent offensive rebounding profile and strong free-throw shooting percentages.

On the other side, Duke is obviously a complete team, one that continues to impress as the season goes along. However, there is something to be said for the step-up in competition that the Blue Devils will see in this game.

The last time Duke played a team that was anywhere near Arizona’s weight class, it lost outright to Clemson.

While our expert doesn’t expect the same result here, Arizona should do enough to keep things close.

Kentucky Wildcats vs Tennessee Volunteers Under 144.5 (-110)

For our final bet of the Sweet 16 round, let’s target the under between Kentucky and Tennessee in the Midwest Region.

This game is also being played in Lucas Oil Stadium, which is not a venue that should be conducive to plenty of scoring. As shown in previous games in stadiums like this, the sight lights aren’t ideal and teams generally tend to start off a bit slow.

Add in the fact that this will be a high-pressure matchup between a pair of teams and coaching staffs that are very familiar with each other, and you have a perfect recipe for an under.

Kentucky likes to play with pace, while Tennessee wants to slow the game down to a crawl. In this instance, the Volunteers should be able to have their way and dictate the pace of the game, especially with it being such a massive matchup.

The last meeting between these teams went under this listed total, even with the Wildcats shooting 50% from beyond the three-point arc.

We should see a bit of shooting regression from Mark Pope’s team here and the Tennessee defense is elite for a reason. Our expert is backing the under at the current number.

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