Total Play As Ten Seeds Begin NCAA Tournament

Colorado State vs. Virginia, 9:10 ET

I'm not going to Vegas this year for March Madness, unfortunately. My friend group, who have done this for years, are still going and will be at Stadium Swim on Thursday to bring in the tournament. (They will be the group with the college basketball jerseys on… literally all of them will have some obscure college hoops player, we were in the promo video this year for Stadium Swim, say hi to them for me.) It is a great time to be out in Vegas if you've never gone. The opening week/weekend of the tournament is a lot of fun. The beers are flowing, the tables are full, the roar and moans of the sportsbook are heard throughout, and the atmosphere is great. It all begins tonight with the first four playing as we have Colorado State taking on Virginia.

I always laugh a bit at the First Four. In recent years, the games have been better, but someone in this game will not actually make the final 64, despite being clearly better (and officially ranked) higher than other teams. We aren't hear to argue about the process or about who should be in the tournament and who shouldn't. We are here to try and get a win. Colorado State ended their play with a 24-10 record, and their conference tournament came to an end with a loss to New Mexico. They started off pretty strong with a win over San Jose State, then got past a high-ranked Nevada. In the Mountain West Championship against New Mexico, they lost by 13 points. The biggest issue seemed to be that they had more turnovers than their opponent. New Mexico scored 22 points off of turnovers compared to Colorado State's six points. They hit one more three (despite shooting a lower percentage), and they even took more field goal attempts. They even were able to get five rebounds more than their opponent. They haven't faced Virginia this season, but looking at their neutral court wins outside of the tournament, they've beaten Boston College, Creighton, and Washington. Creighton is certainly better than Virginia, but the other two are probably not. 

Will the March Madness field expand? (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

Virginia put together a nice campaign with an overall record of 23-10. They were able to go 13-7 in the ACC, and ultimately fell to eventual ACC Tournament Champion, North Carolina State in overtime. Virginia actually played in overtime games in both of their conference games, beating Boston College 66-60 before falling 73-65 in the next one. In the ACC, they struggled against a lot of the better competition, and tonight won't be a cakewalk. Looking at some of the neutral court games they've played in, they faced Florida and won, were destroyed by Wisconsin, and barely beat West Virginia. The Cavaliers are led by their backcourt. They have two guards that combine to score 26.8 points per game. There are only one or two sharpshooters on the team, so if you can guard the 3-point line against them you can force them into the paint where the team isn't very strong. Virginia is typically known for their defense and it could be a relevant factor in this one. If their backcourt can force Colorado State into a lot of turnovers, the Cavaliers could escape with the victory. What they don't want to do is get into a shootout. 

This game has a very tight spread with the Rams being a 2.5 favorite in this game. I can't say I agree with the line or disagree with it, because both teams seem to be very capable of winning. I do think whoever wins the turnover battle will win the game, and frankly, I don't have a good feel for who will win that battle. I'm going to take the over for the game though as I do think both teams put up 60 points or more in this game and with a total of just 120.5 I think we can go over this total by a more comfortable margin than guessing on the spread. Back the over. 

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