Arizona Will Destroy Long Beach State In Tournament Opener

Long Beach State vs. Arizona, 2:00 ET

Ladies and gentlemen, rookies and veterans, we've made it. The NCAA Tournament is upon us and we are here, ready to get the games going. This has been a very interesting (and profitable) college basketball season. Now we get everyone's attention turning to the games. This is the time of the year where people start to pay attention to college hoops and pretend they are heavily invested in the tournament. It is fun, especially the opening weekend. Let's get down to it with a game between Long Beach State and Arizona. 

Long Beach State is a real school that has a college basketball team. I'm guessing if they weren't in the tournament you may not believe that sentence. In order to get here, they went 21-14 and 13-10 in the Big West Conference. Who is in the Big West? Great question. Probably the most famous school in the conference is Hawaii, but UC Irvine was the best in the conference. Long Beach State wouldn't even have a seat at this table if it wasn't for the automatic bid they received from winning the Big West Tournament. They were able to take down UC Riverside with ease in their first game. They then upset UC Irvine by four points in the second round. In the final game they also won over UC Davis by four points. It was their first win over UC Irvine on the season and second over UC Davis. They didn't play a ton of top-end talent this season, but they did beat some familiar names - USC, Michigan, DePaul, and even Iona. They have a strong five on their team, with all starters scoring in double figures. Outside of that, they have very little depth on the team. Their bench only combines for about 15 points of the 78 that they average. 

Arizona is one of the teams that has been reliable most of the season. They ended their regular season at 24-7 - their worst loss of the season came in their last game against a USC team that was starting to click, but not as good as Arizona. In any case, the Wildcats got their revenge in the tournament as they took down USC by 21 in the next game as the two squared off again. Then they lost to Oregon in the second round. In order to look for an accurate comparison of quality of opponent, you probably need to look toward the beginning of the year. They faced Morgan State, Southern, Belmont, UT Arlington, and Colgate. I'd argue that Long Beach State is probably better than most of those teams, but they are closer to those schools than they are to the majority of the Pac-12. In all of those games I mentioned, Arizona took care of business and won by 27+ points in each of those games. 

Quite frankly, the Wildcats are going to maul Long Beach State. They have the significantly better team and I don't think they will be caught napping in this one, especially after losing two of their past three games. Oumar Ballo will be the best forward on the floor, and Caleb Love is likely to be the best scorer in this game as well. Take Arizona to cover the big number at -20.5.

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