Here are a few notes designed to provide a little insight into the massive college tourney card on Thursday.

1. In Baylor’s 65-49 win over Nebraska BU forward Kevin Rogers outrebounded the entire Cornhusker team 20-17. After the low scoring win over Nebraska, the Baylor Bears have now played 8 consecutive unders.  This is the polar opposite of the style of ball the Bears were playing last season, when they concluded the season by playing 16 of 18 games over the total.  Baylor takes on top seed Kansas on Thursday.

2. Herb Sendek knows all about a “little brother” situation, as he was never able to escape the long shadows of North Carolina and Duke when he was the head man at NC State.  He had to overcome a similar situation at Arizona.  But since his arrival, Lute Olson had departed, and a win today by Sendek’s Sun Devils will give him a 5-0 series run and consecutive season sweeps.  With a new coach likely in Tucson next year, ASU would have edges in both performance and stability over their in-state rivals for the first time in decades.  ASU’s 4-game win streak has only been by margins of 5, 5, 6, and 2, so it has hardly been “Devil Dominance”.  But as the last time these teams will meet for 10 months, tonight’s game is critically important in this rivalry.  Vegas and online sportsbooks opened Arizona State as a 3.5-point favorite.

3. A lot of conference “rivals” don’t play each other all that often in the era of 12, 14, and 16 team conferences.  But when Temple meets St. Joseph’s today there’s plenty of familiarity.  Although the Atlantic 10 would be more accurately named the Atlantic 14, Temple and St. Joe’s play twice every year in the regular season.  This is also the fourth consecutive year that they’ve met in the conference tournament.  Extraordinarily, Amhad Nivins and Dionte Christmas are matching up for the 12th time in their career. St. Joe’s has a 5-6 mark over that time frame but Temple has been covering at a 7-4 rate.  The past two years has seen the rivalry tilt in the direction of Temple as the Owls are 4-1 straight up and 5-0 against the pointspread.

4. When Akron edged Toledo 93-92 in overtime on Tuesday in the MAC tournament I was eager to find reasons to play the Zips in the second round of their tournament.  I expected that the linemaker would overadjust for the overtime, when in fact Akron’s minutes were spread out beautifully. 10 Akron players played double digit minutes, with 8 of them between 16 and 32 minutes.  But the MAC has an odd format to their tourney with a day’s break between the opening round on Tuesday and today’s action.  So no overreaction would be in the offing.  The Zips opened a 1.5 point dog to the Miami-Ohio Redhawks at Vegas and offshore sportsbooks.

5. Wednesday was probably decent for the sports books. The public doesn’t completely knee-jerk to favorites and overs like they used to, but when the dogs go 11-10 and the unders go 13-8, online sportsbooks and those behind the counter in Las Vegas are usually happy.

Good luck on Thursday.