Conference tournaments roll on and so does the regular season as we stare down a Friday card of college hoops. We’ll add two more conference tournaments to the mix today, as the CAA and SoCon get underway to determine which member will go dancing from those one-bid leagues. Both conference tournaments project to be a lot of fun, so keep an eye on those and check out the predictions.

In total, we have 37 games today and 25 are conference tourney tilts, hardly a surprise in advance of a big Saturday slate for all of the major conferences, as many of them wrap up the regular season and set their sights on the conference tourneys. As usual, I’m bypassing the early games in the interest of lead time, but there are some very good early afternoon games to follow.

For more college basketball best bets today, check out Greg Peterson’s daily article and Tyler Shoemaker’s TSI Projections/Best Bets on weekdays.

As always, I want to give a shout-out to Bart Torvik (BartTorvik.com), Erik Haslam (Haslametrics.com), and KenPom, as they provide a lot of great data.

This season, we’ve also connected with CBBAnalytics.com to access their data and I’ll be working that into my article. Use promo code VSIN30 for $30 off at CBB Analytics and find your betting edge.

This article will run Monday-Saturday. Lines will be from DraftKings, as they are widely available to readers. Shop around for the best prices.

Check the latest college basketball odds for legal U.S. sportsbooks across the country and our Vegas odds if you share a state with us here at VSiN. Also, give the college basketball betting splits (DraftKings) and Circa CBB Betting Splits a look for these or any other college basketball games today have your interest.

Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publish.

Penn Quakers (-1.5, 144.5) at Brown Bears

Embed from Getty Images

7 p.m. ET

The Ivy League regular season finale for Penn and Brown is also the season finale for the Bears. The Quakers will be the No. 3 seed in next weekend’s Ivy League Tournament, while Brown will miss out for the second straight season. It is a nice accomplishment for first-year Penn head coach Fran McCaffery after his long tenure at Iowa.

Ivy Leaguers are pretty disciplined, but you do have to wonder how invested Brown still is at this point. They lost 80-62 and 86-80 last weekend at Columbia and Cornell. Perhaps this is a better spot for them because opponents have consistently shot more 3s than they have, but Penn is the only team in the conference with a lower 3P Rate.

But, I think Penn will be focused on this game. McCaffery has plenty to talk to his team about, as they had a season-low .895 points per possession last time out in the win over Harvard. He’ll be looking for better shot selection and execution here, as the team looks to avoid furthering bad habits heading into the conference tournament with a rematch against Harvard.

Penn won the first game over Brown by an 81-73 count and trailed at half before making some nice adjustments to lead for the entirety of the second half. Brown will be honoring senior Landon Lewis, who has actually been a four-year coach at the school, a true rarity in this day and age. Maybe the team rallies for him, but sometimes Senior Night can be more of a melancholy event.

Lastly, Penn is tops in the Ivy League in TO% on both offense and defense, while Brown turned the ball over the most of any team in the conference. With the extra possessions, I like the Quakers.

Pick: Penn -1.5

Southeast Missouri State Redhawks (-2.5, 141.5) vs. Morehead State Eagles

10:30 p.m. ET

The nightcap in the OVC Tournament semifinals is SEMO State vs. Morehead State, as the Eagles hit the floor for the first time in Evansville. The Redhawks beat Lindenwood by a deuce last night in a frantic ending, erasing a 13-point first half deficit. Normally I’d want to fade a team coming off of a game like that with so much energy taken out of them, but that’s not the case today.

The teams split the regular season, with SEMO State winning by 12 and Morehead State winning by 2. In both games, though, SEMO State won the shot volume from the floor and also won on the offensive glass. The Redhawks also had a higher Rim & 3 Rate in the two head-to-head meetings, which definitely matters to me in a game that projects to be a bit of a toss-up. Morehead State took 32 mid-range jumpers in the two games. SEMO State took 22. In a neutral setting such as this, I feel like those mid-range shots become even tougher.

Morehead State was the slightly better offensive team between the two during OVC play, but SEMO State was the better defensive team. Factor in the shot volume and the shot selection from the two regular season games and I think that neutralizes the slight offensive edge for the Eagles, while helping the Redhawks defense play up a little bit more.

I’ll also take the much more experienced coach in Brad Korn over second-year coach Jonathan Mattox. The Eagles got to beat up on the weak part of the schedule heading into the conference tourney and even had close wins over Eastern Illinois, Southern Indiana, and Little Rock, all much worse than SEMO State.

Pick: Southeast Missouri State -2.5

The post College Basketball Picks for Friday, March 6 from Adam Burke appeared first on VSiN.