Wednesday’s Best Bets

Wednesday College Basketball Betting Preview It's a big Wednesday in the college hoops world, and with the NBA set to go on hiatus for All-Star festivities, and March quickly approaching, the overall betting market in college basketball is likely to get a big uptick.

And after producing a winning record with these selections over multiple days last week, I'm looking for similar results this week, starting with tonight's action. And for it, I've got a couple of road teams that I believe will get the job done.

Florida at Texas A&M (SEC, 8:30 p.m. ET)

Best Bet #1: Florida -5.5

The Gators recent form will have some shying away from them tonight, as a 0-5 ATS run overall and coming off a 17-point defeat at Ole Miss over the weekend can hardly bring exuberant confidence. But while they Gators may not be a “great” team this year, they still are a very good team when playing at their best, and tonight feels like a good spot to get that type of effort from Florida.

Remember, this is a Florida team that's beaten Auburn by 22 and fell a bucket short to LSU in SEC play, and in between there have been some duds as well. But Florida's also beaten a very good Providence team by 32 this season, they've beaten Xavier as well, so when the Gators are running hot, they are better than most believe. They haven't shown that much lately, but Texas A&M is a team they should be able to “get right” against.

In fact, the Aggies are probably getting a bit too much respect simply for being at home with this line, as it's not like they've been a model of greatness either. Yes, they had a close loss to LSU as well (OT), but each of their last four defeats have all come by double digits, two of which were at home in games that closed with one possession spreads.

Texas A&M simply doesn't have anywhere near enough offensive talent to compete on a nightly basis – they average 60.6 points per game – and I don't care how reliant you are on a solid defense, putting up that kind of production on 38.3% shooting each night is going to get you run out of a lot of buildings; including your own.

It's been seven straight games for the Aggies where they've failed to reach 70 points offensively, and given that the Gators average 72/game overall this year, that's not good news for Texas A&M backers. Going further, in every instance since the start of December that Florida has had a sub-70 point effort offensively like they did last game, the following outing they've put up at 80+ points in four of those five games, and have hit at least 71 points in all of them.

The average there works out to 83.8 points/game for the Gators after a sub-70 point effort, and if Florida gets anywhere near that range tonight, that's just way too many points for this lackluster Aggies offense to keep pace with.

Unless Florida's got another dud of an effort in them for the second straight game, they should win this one by double digits.

Iowa State at Oklahoma (ESPN2, 9:00 p.m. ET)

Best Bet #2: Iowa State +10

The Cyclones are a team that has not come close to living up to their expectations this season, and at 10-13 SU, they are probably left aiming towards peaking for the Big 12 tournament and trying to make the most of their season that way. But they've already beaten this Oklahoma team by 13 points earlier this year, and now are catching double digits against the Sooners in a strong spot to fade Oklahoma.

The Sooners are coming off an impressive 10-point home victory over West Virginia over the weekend, and after tonight's game, their next two games come against two of the Top 3 ranked teams in the nation - at Kansas and vs Baylor. Those are contests that are hard not to peak ahead too, and while the Sooners won't completely dismiss Iowa State tonight because of that first meeting, that spread is a lofty number in what is essentially a sandwich and letdown spot all in one for Oklahoma.

Oklahoma backers will point to Iowa State's winless record on the road this year as something to lean on when laying the chalk, but it's not like they haven't been close in some games. There were four-point defeats at Texas and at Baylor this year mixed in with some rough efforts, but considering they were catching +8.5 points in their visit to Baylor a month ago, getting even more points against a much worse Oklahoma team is a bargain.

Yes, Baylor wasn't looked at as the #1 team in the country then as they are now, but they weren't far off, and they also didn't have the rough scheduling spot to deal with that Oklahoma has attached to them tonight.