The Saint Mary’s Gaels and the Gonzaga Bulldogs will finish their respective regular-season schedules against each other this coming Saturday. The Bulldogs are +950 to win the national title, while the Gaels have much longer odds at +10,000 to win the Tournament.
Betting on the St Mary’s Gaels (27-2 Overall / 13-1 Conference)
Barring a loss this Thursday to the Santa Clara Broncos, the Gaels seems to have reserved a spot in the upcoming national tournament via the at-large berth. But beating the Gonzaga and avenging their humiliating 90-60 loss to the Bulldogs earlier this month at home is definitely going to make St. Mary’s case to go dancing in March as airtight as possible. In their most recent game, as of this writing, the Gaels scored a dominant 92-63 home win over the San Diego Toreros. Saint Mary’s was shooting the rock from deep so well, connecting on 10 of their 22 attempts from long range for a 45.5 percent success rate. Saint Mary’s is one of the deadliest outside shooting teams in the nation. The Gaels are second nationally with a 39.9 3-point shooting percentage, though, they hit just 4 of 14 from behind the arc in the loss to Gonzaga.
The under is 9-1 in the last 10 meetings of Saint Mary’s and Gonzaga in Spokane, dating back to 2010.
Betting on the Gonzaga Bulldogs (23-6 Overall / 10-4 Conference)
Poor, Toreros. After getting beat up by Saint Mary’s, they will be obstructing the path next of Gonzaga this Thursday after the Bulldogs suffered their first loss in conference play when they fell to the BYU Cougars on the road last Saturday, 91-78. Presuming that the Toreros would follow the script and just let Gonzaga crush them, the Bulldogs will have some measure of their confidence back when they meet Saint Mary’s again. The Bulldogs shot just 41.7 percent in the loss to BYU. That being said, it’s not a good idea to bet on Gonzaga suffering such an outage on offense at least twice in three games. The Bulldogs are tops in the nation with 87.6 points per game on a fantastic 57.4 effective field goal percentage. They even shot an unholy 67.9 percent from the field in the win over Saint Mary’s.
The Bulldogs are 6-4-1 against the spread (ATS) in their last 10 games at home against Saint Mary’s.
