Louisville vs Virginia Free Pick

College basketball primetime Thursday night features an exciting ACC matchup. #1 in the land Virginia is in Louisville, Kentucky to play basketball. The spread has been issued at Virginia -3.5.

These two powerhouses did battle just about a month ago. Louisville was at John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville Va. on January 28th. The spread was UVA -10. The end result was a PUSH as Virginia beat Louisville 74-64.

The Cavaliers of Virginia are 26-2 overall and 18-6-1 ATS. They score 67 points per game on offense and allow just 52 PPG. They are on a three game winning streak since losing to Virginia Tech on February 10th. In their last outing at Pitt, they won easily 66-37. They allowed Pitt to score only 7 points in the first half, playing simply unheard of defense.

Louisville is 19-10 straight up and 14-12-1 ATS. They score 77 PPG and allow 70 PPG. In their last game they beat Virginia Tech 75-68. Before that they lost back to back games to ACC powerhouses Duke and UNC.

You may be surprised to learn that Virginia pretty much owns the series between these two teams. The are 6-1 against the Cardinals and 4-2-1 ATS.

Keys for a Virginia Win

Points off of turnovers. Less scoring possessions means less scoring and Virginia is one of the best at forcing turnovers.

Shutting down shooters: In the first matchup on Jan 31st Virginia held Quentin Snider to just 1 of 5.

Keys for a Louisville Win

Attack the lane. Louisville is a big team. They are 6’10” , 6’11” and 7’0″ tall in the gut. Shooting from the outside would play into Virginia’s defensive game plan.

I can see Virginia stumping Louisville with their typical tight defense but Louisville should be able to break out some. I can see a game that scores more than Virginia is used to seeing and actually possibly a close finish with Virginia getting the win and covering the -3.5.