Bet on Duke, Kentucky to cover the spread in tonight’s Champions Classic doubleheader

Most college hoop heads view the Champions Classic as the unofficial start of the college basketball season. The monster early-season MTE helps set the table for feast week.

Naturally, we have College Basketball Odds and Best Bets for today’s Champions Classic, including our Michigan State vs Duke prediction and Kansas vs Kentucky prediction.

Read on for a full breakdown and best bets for each game.

Michigan State has a superb backcourt. The Tyson Walker-AJ Hoggard duo is among the nation’s best.

I’m also not worried about Sparty yet. The loss to James Madison hurt, but I don’t expect them to go 1-for-20 from 3 while missing 14 free throws in any other game this season.

That said, if I were worried about Michigan State, I’d be concerned about their frontcourt.

Sparty is very undersized on the front line. The frontcourt rotation of Coen Carr, Malik Hall and Mady Sissoko stands 6-foot-5, 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-9, respectively.

Kyle Filipowski should have a field day here. If you don’t have a decent interior presence, the 7-foot NBA prospect will eat you alive.

It’s an extreme example, but Filipowski destroyed Dartmouth’s undersized interior in Duke’s season opener, dropping 25 points on 9-for-10 shooting.

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Additionally, the Blue Devils have a few other supersized forwards, including 7-foot-1 Chrisitan Reeves, 6-foot-10 Ryan Young and 6-foot-9 Mark Mitchell.

Conversely, on defense, it’ll be tough for Walker and Hoggard to get downhill and to the rim on “giant Duke.” Instead, Sparty will have to hit their 3s to win this game.

But Michigan State hasn’t hit their 3s in the early going (2-for-31 through two games), and Duke generally ranks above-average in 3-point rate allowed (28.9% through two games, 54th nationally).

This is a tough matchup for Michigan State, and barring a monster 3-point shooting performance from the Walker-Hoggard duo, I suspect Sparty’s undersized interior will sink them.

So, I’ll back Filipowski and the Blue Devils to record a convincing bounce-back victory after dropping a challenging home game to Arizona last Friday.

Also, the total here has opened way too high. Both these teams play at a slower pace, and Duke’s defense becomes suffocating in these slower-paced, half-court games.

KenPom projects this total at 137, about five points lower than the market.

This game is challenging to handicap.

It’s tough to figure out what we’re getting from Kentucky. This team has a ton of talent, including the nation’s best incoming freshman class. But John Calipari also has three freshmen pegged for starting roles and five more for important bench roles.

By Bart Torvik’s Projected Effective Talent metric, Kentucky is the eighth-most talented team in the country. But, by Torvik’s Experience metric, the Wildcats are the 348th most experienced team.

That means there’s a wide range of outcomes for Kentucky this year. The Wildcats are among the nation’s most volatile teams.

However, I think the Jayhawks are a tad overvalued right now.

The Jayhawks’ perimeter group is spectacular. Grabbing Hunter Dickinson in the portal is among Bill Self’s most significant non-NCAA Tournament-related accomplishments.

But there are questions about this group. The Jayhawks aren’t perfect, despite what many say.

Who’s going to start at guard alongside DaJuan Harris? Replacing Jalen Wilson (20 PPG last year) and Gradey Dick (15 PPG last year) won’t be easy, and all that lost production won’t be replaced by Towson transfer Nick Timberlake or freshman Elmarko Jackson alone.

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From a matchup perspective, I think Kentucky’s backcourt can score with Kansas’s, as long as the Wildcats keep making threes and not turning the ball over.

And down low, West Virginia transfer Tre Mitchell can battle with Dickinson down low.

Plus, what do we make of Dickinson now that Michigan is playing better without him? How big of an impact does he make?

Ultimately, I think the market is a tad hot on the Jayhawks. A seven-point spread is too high for this matchup – KenPom, BartTorvik and The Action Network’s PRO Model all project Kansas as between a four- or five-point favorite.

So, even though we’re buying an entirely unproven Kentucky team, I’m willing to catch two possessions with the talented Wildcats.

The Inquirer is not an online gambling operator, or a gambling site. We provide this information about sports betting for entertainment purposes only.