Saint Mary's Gaels vs San Francisco Dons Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 02/06/25

We’ve got a pivotal game in the WCC on our hands on Thursday as the Saint Mary’s Gaels head to San Francisco for a date with the Dons, who are up to 2nd place in the conference standings and are a perfect 14-0 at home this season. Few teams are running as well as St. Mary’s at the moment, and much of that has to do with the excellent job that Randy Bennett has done this season following a couple of key departures from last year’s WCC title-winning team. With that said, the Gaels’ 10-game winning streak isn’t without a few fortunate results, including a 4-point win over Gonzaga last Saturday that was more of a product of the Bulldogs’ uncharacteristically awful shooting night (3-17 from the three-point line, 6 missed free throws) than an indication of how well Saint Mary’s played in that game.

Teams have been shooting poorly against the Gaels to an unsustainable degree of late, and I can’t expect that to continue given the quality of opponent in this game. After all, Saint Mary’s is 213th in three-point percentage defense on the road this season, so we can expect a bit of regression in a hostile environment against a San Francisco offense that has been very good at home to this point. And I wouldn’t expect much of an outburst from the Gaels’ offense, as the Dons are a top-5 defense at defending the three-point line at home, while Saint Mary’s ranks outside the top 200 in effective field-goal percentage and the top 300 in three-point percentage per BartTorvik. If the Gaels find themselves in a negative game script in the second half of this game — a situation that they’ve rarely been in since the nonconference portion of the schedule —  I could see things spiraling a bit for an offense that typically likes to play extremely slow, grind out possessions and shorten the game.

San Francisco has been fantastic at home this season, particularly in the return matchups against conference opponents. The Dons lost by 23 at Santa Clara and beat the Broncos in the return fixture. The same can be said for a 24-point home victory against Washington State a month after losing in Pullman. Lastly, San Francisco is catching Saint Mary’s in a fantastic spot, with the Gaels all but having locked up the WCC regular-season title after last weekend’s win. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if they came out a bit flat and the Dons play one of their best games of the season in this one. I think San Francisco is certainly live in this game, so I’ll gladly take the points in a game I make closer to one possession.

Saint Mary’s vs San Francisco prediction: San Francisco +6.5 (-110) available at time of publishing. Playable at that number.

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