Rohit Ponnaiya, betting analysts for Covers.com, discusses the impact Juwan Howard's suspension will have on Michigan and dishes out his picks for Thursday's top college hoops contests.

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College Basketball Season Heating Up Entering March

Welcome back to cheddar but is brought to you by Bet mgm. This year's college basketball season is really heating up. So much so that we already saw a brawl last weekend, after the final buzzer sounded in this past saturday's michigan Wisconsin contest. Both head coaches, john Howard and Greg Gard exchanged words before Howard hits a Wisconsin assistant coach in the head, a shoving match between the players then ensued And Howard would later be suspended for Michigan's final five regular season games, joining us now to talk more about john Howard and tonight's college hoops slate is Rowan Penny, a betting analyst at covers dot com. So we know michigan is a bubble team at the moment, but how does Howard suspension impact the wolverines tournament chances? You know, I don't think it's gonna affect it too much to be honest with you. And it's really, I'm really glad that we got to see how well they could perform under Martelli the other night against Rutgers and I think that win was a huge, huge momentum changer for them. Uh you know, as much as Howard means that team, as much as coaching means in college basketball, we've seen so many instances kind of across the sports board where we've seen teams in a position like that really come together under that sort of adversity and I think they played very well against Rutgers in that last game. We saw uh you know, they came out firing on all cylinders when Caleb Houston gets going and he can, you know, hit the Caleb Houston shooting well, it's a very tough team to beat and they beat a Rutgers team that was slightly ahead of them in the standings and had won four of its previous five games. So I think that was a big momentum changer for them. I think they know that they can come together as a team, they can get a little bit of momentum down the stretch and play well. Let's keep in mind that this team was very inconsistent even with Howard at the helm this season. So I don't necessarily think that a shakeup is going to be uh, put them in that much of a worse position. Well, let's hope so for sure. Staying in the big 10, number 17 Illinois favored by six over number 22 Ohio State tonight. Do you believe Illinois will cover here? You know what, I, I honestly don't and as much as I think is kind of the dark horse in the national championship picture. I like them in a lot of ways. I think six points is a pretty big number to consider when you keep in mind that if you look at their last 10 games, there are five and five straight up in those contests And in three of those wins they won by fewer than six points. They play a lot of close games. They're going up against the Ohio State Buckeyes team that has plenty of upperclassmen as one of the most efficient teams offensively in the country, not quite as good on the defensive side of things, but they still hold opponents to about 40.9% shooting from the field. They play a very slow paced style, which is going to limit possessions and that tends to keep games close, even in the games will stay loose. They tend to kind of play within reach. They don't get blown out a lot. And I think six points is a pretty big number when you consider how well they hit their free throws as well. Of course, a lot of people will point out that the buckeyes don't travel that well. Uh, they don't play anywhere near as well away from columbus as they do at home, But it's still worth noting that they're nine and three against their spread in their last 12 road games, win catch points. So this is the position where I really like them to at least keep things close even if they don't end up pulling off the win. Well elsewhere we've got top rankings aga. There only a 10.5 point road favorite against san Francisco casual fans may jump on the Zags given their dominance in conference play. But are we overlooking the dons, you know, I honestly don't think so. I think this is the sort of number you have to jump on when you're, you know, you're betting Gonzaga all year and you look at them in their conference playing their, you know, their favorites of 25 points, 30 points over and over again, you're finally getting a reasonable line. Yes, they're a good team. Don't get me wrong, probably the second or third best team in the conference. They play well on both ends of the floor, but they're on a completely different level than those eggs team. You look at when they played against each other last month and the Zags ended up winning by 16 points. Uh, they were at home of course, But you know, they only shot 28% from deep in that contest. They were outrebounded. I don't expect that to happen again. This is a team that usually shoots about 38% from three point range, their third of the country and rebounding rate. So I expect a little bit of positive regression in those areas. As far as the dawn's go, you know, they're decent offensively, but they don't shoot the ball that well. They're going up against against a team that may be very underrated when it comes to the defensive side of things. Uh, those eggs are holding opponents to about 37% from the field shooting in conference play. Uh, they've been fantastic. Holmgren's such a force in terms of blocking shots, changing shots in the, you know, closer to the basket. They're really good team on both sides of the floor here. And the biggest thing when I look at this number, when I look at a 10 point spread is I look, the closest number two that we saw earlier in the year. It was against texas Tech just before christmas. Uh, texas tech was a neutral site game. Texas Tech was, I believe, a 10 point underdog in that one they covered of course. And you're getting almost an identical number against San Francisco. Yeah, I'm gonna take that. Alright, Rohit, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate the betting analyst at covers dot com.