Caleb Wilfinger
March is here and the Pickswise college basketball handicapping team has everything you need to prepare yourself for Selection Sunday, which is just a few hours away! Championship Week wraps up on Sunday, including the final in the AAC, Atlantic 10, SEC and Big Ten. The Madness is picking up, so let’s keep the momentum going!
While the college hoops market is as sharp as it has ever been, there are still a few good value bets of which to take advantage on this jam-packed Championship Week slate. Let’s take a look at my college basketball best bet for the Sunday card, and make sure you also check out our NCAAB picks for the biggest games of the day.
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Wisconsin Badgers -3 over Michigan Wolverines (-110)
Odds available at DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publishing. Playable to Wisconsin -3.5
The Big Ten tournament has featured a ton of compelling matchups over the course of the last 4 days, and the tournament will culminate with the title game featuring the Wisconsin Badgers and Michigan Wolverines. Both of these teams are playing some of their best basketball of the season heading into this contest, which should provide us with another really fun game to close the tournament. Michigan was able to take the only other meeting between these teams this season back in December by just 3 points, and so much has changed with both programs since then. We should be in store for a great second act on Sunday, and I think the Badgers have a couple of key edges in this matchup.
Wisconsin does have some clear advantages in this matchup, particularly on offense. After all, the Badgers are one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the league, and they’ll be taking on a Michigan defense that is a below average 2-point percentage defense and 3-point percentage defense since the start of the calendar year. Furthermore, Michigan defense doesn’t do a good enough job of forcing turnovers (244th in turnover percentage) and they allow a ton of open looks from beyond the arc (208th in 3-point rate allowed since January 1). If there was ever a team to take advantage of these defensive lapses, it would be this Wisconsin team that is shooting the cover off the ball in Big Ten play. John Tonje is matchup nightmare for almost any defense, and he should have his way with a Wolverines unit that has struggled with staying out of foul trouble against high level competition of late. As for the Wisconsin defense, the Badgers are a top 25 unit since February 1, and they have really picked up their interior defense while still managing to not send their opponents to the free-throw line. At the end of the day, I picked the Badgers to win this tournament and I’m not backing down from that selection now that they’ve reached the final.
Read our full Wisconsin Badgers vs Michigan Wolverines prediction
