College Basketball Plays For Opening Day

College Basketball is back ladies and gentlemen! I personally am pumped as basketball is easily my favorite sport and tonight the season kicks off with a ton of games. I mean, go to PointsBet and scroll through the slate it seems like there are somewhere between 30 and 5,000 games tonight. And, we are going to bet them all! Just kidding, not a chance we do that, but I have a few plays for today. I'm going to share some of the plays I have for today's games.

USC vs. Kansas State, 10:00 ET

Upon first glance, there isn't much of what I would call a name-recognition game. Of course, teams like Duke, Purdue, Kentucky and others are playing today, but they aren't playing each other. However, this is one of the games that I think has some intrigue and two schools that are likely to be in the NCAA tournament. A lot of the other games are those warmup games where you know you're going to destroy the opponent. USC has Boogie Ellis back and he is going to be the focal point of the offense once again. That is half of the story of USC, the other half will be Isaiah Collier coming to USC - he is the #1 ranked recruit in the nation and I am excited to see how he plays. Last season Kansas State finished in the Elite Eight last season but they have lost a lot of players and have some transfers coming in that are expected to play a lot of minutes. That could be a struggle for them to all click right away. The defense and continuity of the Trojans should be too much for the Wildcats to handle. This is technically a road game for Kansas Sate, but it is being played in Las Vegas so there isn't a home court advantage. I like USC to win this one by more than the three points they have to so I'll take USC -3.

GREENSBORO, NC - MARCH 11: Kyle Filipowski (30) of the Duke Blue Devils reacts after dunking the ball during the ACC Championship against the Virginia Cavaliers on March 11, 2023 at Greensboro Coliseum in Greensboro, NC. (Photo by David Jensen/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Radford vs. North Carolina, 7:00 ET

North Carolina came into last season with extremely high expectations. They were the top ranked team in the country to start the season and it ended as a disaster. They lost that rank quickly and ended up not even making the NCAA tournament. The Tar Heels now look to be on a bit of a revenge tour and still have some talent on this team. Armando Bacot is there as is RJ Davis. They should form a talented duo that will at the very least keep them competitive. Radford is not a school that I can confidently say I know a lot about, but they did have a good season at 21-15. The team does have one name you might be somewhat familiar with: Bryan Antoine. Antoine was a McDonald's All-American and a top-20 recruit for the 2019 class. It didn't really work out, but he played well last season for Radford. Tonight, I think the Tar Heels look to put last year behind them and come out with a statement. They should win this game by 25 or more points. Back UNC at -18.5.

Dartmouth vs. Duke, 9:00 ET

Sometimes you look at lines and they just seem a little too high, right? That's how I feel about this game. Duke opens their season against Dartmouth and you know they will win, but are they going to win by 30? I kind of doubt it. While there is continuity with some of their best players coming back (you can read about that in my ACC preview that I posted on Friday) they have some new, talented players coming in. This should be one of those games where Duke looks to work on plays and offensive schemes in practice. That should slow the game down a bit but I also think that means the Blue Devils will have more turnovers than normal. Dartmouth was very bad last season at 10-18 and didn't play a team that has the talent that Duke does, but they at least seemed competitive against teams like South Florida and Massachusetts. 28 points just seems like too many to pass up. I'll take Dartmouth and the points.

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