The Uconn Huskies are on the road this evening without star freshman Liam McNeeley at 6:30 ET to take on a Villanova squad that is hungry for a marquee win. The Huskies are entering this game as a top ten team after a concerning start to their season which saw them drop out of the Top 25 rankings entirely. Led by Junior Alex Karaban and Senior Hassan Diarra, They have rattled off eight straight victories, many of which came in single digit fashion.
In four of their last five games, they have beaten Providence by 3 (at home) Â Butler by 4 (at Butler), Xavier by 5 in OT (at home), and Gonzaga by 6 (in NYC). Three of those wins were against teams that rank poorly in the KENPOM rankings, as Butler, Xavier, and Providence are all relatively average squads. Yet, they struggled to win those games convincingly.
Villanova on the other hand sits at 10-5 with some solid wins with their best coming against #14 Cincinnati at home, a game where they were +4.5 point underdogs. They are led by Senior Eric Dixon, who is averaging 25.8 points per game, and 3&D standout Wooga Poplar, a transfer from Miami. This line sits at -1.5 in favor of the Wildcats, and we find this to be very telling. The #9 team in the country is coming into a game against an unranked squad as underdogs.
This immediately makes us sound the alarm that Villanova will win this game. Vegas is expecting a Villanova win, and if they weren’t, the Huskies would be favorites—with or without their star freshman McNeeley.Â
