Here are some news, notes, thoughts, and ideas for Saturday board.  With 101 games on the college basketball betting board and only 5 contests available for NBA betting, please forgive the focus on the college ranks.

1. The tired “Bracket Buster” concept seems to have lost a lot of juice, resulting in half the board simply looking like a December Saturday.  Maybe it’s because the Missouri Valley, annually the deepest “mid-major” conference, is so down this year, contributing to a lack of mid-major buzz.  St. Mary’s hosting Utah State and Butler traveling to Davidson are interesting games, but those teams seem like relatively safe bids even with a conference tourney loss.  Of course this assumes that Mills is back for St. Mary’s and the Gaels are judged by the committee based on their performance with the Aussie point guard in the lineup.

2.  Take those four teams and match them up against Georgetown, USC, Michigan, and Miami-FL?  Now you’re talking true “Bracket Buster”.  Not that the power conferences will ever allow that to happen.

3. It’s not a picture postcard day on the Southern California beaches today, 70 and cloudy. Still, Wisconsin-Green Bay’s visit to Long Beach and Montana State’s trip to Santa Barbara have to include an element of distraction for the arctic-dwelling Phoenix and Bobcats, don’t they?

4. Usually dreadfully low scoring game occur in conferences that don’t have the kind of athleticism that results in a fleet of scorers on everyone’s roster, like the Horizon, Colonial, Missouri Valley, etc. That’s what made Penn State’s hideous 38-33 win over Illinois in the mighty Big Ten particularly shocking.  The Nittany Lions “broke open” the game with 4 free throws in the last 17 seconds of a game where the charity stripe was the difference, as Illinois failed to get to the line.  Yep, not a single free throw attempt for the Illini.  Both teams had the same number of turnovers as they did field goals, 15/15 for Illinois and 13/13 for Penn State.

5. How do college upsets happen?  Frequently the answer can be found outside the 3-point circle.  The Charlotte 49ers were a dreadful 30-134 (22.3%)  on their 3’s in their previous 6 lined games, but a 8-19 (42.1%) night from behind the arc led them to a 65-60 win over Xavier. The Musketeers shot only 4-15 (26.7%) from long range, their second worst 3-point shooting performance in their last 15 games.

Thanks for reading this far. Good luck in your battle against Vegas and the offshore sportsbooks on Saturday.