Villanova Wildcats vs Xavier Musketeers Prediction, Odds and Picks for Tuesday, 01/14/25

Following an 80-68 loss at St. John’s on Saturday, the Villanova Wildcats (11-6) will hit the road again on Tuesday night when they travel to Cincinnati to play the Xavier Musketeers (10-7). The Wildcats struggled defensively on Saturday, as they allowed the ‘Johnnies to score 1.23 points per possession. St. John’s also got to the free throw line 22 more times and grabbed 16 more rebounds than Villanova. Xavier, on the other hand, comes into this game off a road win at DePaul. The win snapped another multi-game skid for the Musketeers, who are now 2-4 in conference play. 

Despite being the better team on paper, Villanova is not in a very profitable spot here. Playing on the road in consecutive games is not an easy feat in college basketball overall, much less the Big East  – especially when the team is an underdog in both games like the Wildcats are here. In fact, when both teams come into a Big East matchup following road games, road underdogs who were underdogs in their previous game are just 3-11 ATS in those spots over the last 3 seasons. I believe that trend will hold true on Tuesday night. Xavier has 2 of the best defenders in the Big East in Zach Freemantle and Dailyn Swain, both of whom can take turns on Eric Dixon – who hasn’t been able to piece together his entire game offensively in the last 2 outings. On the other side of the floor, the Musketeers excel in their perimeter shooting and getting to the free throw line – 2 areas in which Villanova struggles defensively. They should be able to score comfortably against a Villanova defense that is 9th out of 11 Big East teams in opposing 3-point rate and free throw rate. The Musketeers are shooting close to 39% from the perimeter and greater than 80% from the free throw line in conference play, which tells me Villanova’s free throw luck may run out here. For reference, Villanova’s conference opponents are shooting just 66.4% from the free throw line coming into this game. Given the fact that Xavier’s entire starting lineup makes more than 70% of its free throws, we could see another situation where the Wildcats’ inability to defend without fouling costs them the game like it did at St. John’s on Saturday. All things considered, give me the home team in a fired-up spot against a team playing its 2nd-consecutive game as a road underdog in conference. 

Villanova vs Xavier prediction: Xavier Musketeers -2.5 (-115) at the time of publishing. Playable to -3. 

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