College Basketball Best Bets Today: Odds, predictions and picks for Friday, January 20th

College basketball schedule today has 14 games

Per usual, we’ve got a small college hoops card on Friday, but it does feature a good bit of variety. We’ve got MAC, MAAC, A-10, Big East and Mountain West all on the docket for this evening. Noticeably absent is the Ivy League, which usually plays on Friday and Saturday, but we still have enough games to peruse without the smart kids.

A couple of smart kids you want to peruse today are Jonathan Von Tobel and Andy MacNeil, who are doing fine work with daily NBA picks and daily NHL picks. Give ‘em a read today, tomorrow and every day.

Here are some thoughts on the January 20 card (odds from DraftKings):

Canisius and Fairfield meet for the first of two times during MAAC play and the Stags have grown from -4 to -5 in the market. I tend to agree with that move. While Canisius has played a much tougher nonconference schedule and some of their metrics reflect that, the Golden Eagles have not performed well in eight conference games. Among the 11 teams in the MAAC, Canisius is ninth in eFG% offense and 10th in eFG% defense.

Fairfield can’t score and can’t make anything from 3, but they have the conference’s second-best defensive efficiency and eFG%. They’re also tops in the conference in 3P% against. They’ve also given Iona a bit of a scare, which is something most teams in this conference won’t do.

Fairfield is shooting over 76% from the free throw line in league play, an important metric because this line puts the game right into free throw range for the favorite. They’re the better defense at the rim and this game is predicated on Canisius’s ability to make 3s in a road setting.

This is far from my favorite card, and I dug really hard to try and find stronger bets. This was the one that made the cut for me.