College Basketball Betting – Notre Dame Fighting Irish at Florida State Seminoles

By Charles Jay

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish have chalked up a couple of pretty good wins on the road lately, but will that prepare them to go into very hostile territory in Tallahassee on Wednesday night to take on the Florida State Seminoles? They took a pretty good beating on the trip there last season in ACC action, so it has to be with cautious optimism at best that they take the floor in the 7 PM ET start at the Donald L Tucker Center. This will be shown online with ESPN 3, and BetAnySports customers, who get reduced juice to give them better college basketball betting odds, can remain in the action even after the opening tip off, as they access real-time wagering through Live Betting Ultra.
The Irish (16-2 straight-up, 7-5 ATS) have lost only to Villanova and Purdue, both nationally -ranked teams. Currently they are on a seven-game winning streak, in the last five of those wins have been very solid ones, including a 77-70 victory against Louisville. Of course, they have had a recent history of beating the Cardinals at home, so that was not tremendously surprising. But they have gone to Miami and Virginia Tech to win their last two games. Notre Dame is ranked 15th in the nation in both major polls.
Florida State has huge wins over Florida, Duke and Virginia, the latter of which came on the road. They have lost only to Temple and North Carolina, which took place on Saturday. This was not an encouraging outing for them, as will discuss in a moment.
These are the top two teams in the Atlantic Coast Conference standings right now.
In the college basketball betting odds posted on this game by the people at BetAnySports, Florida State is the favorite:
Florida State Seminoles -6
Notre Dame Fighting Irish +6
Florida State has shot over 50% on the season, and they have covered eight of their last 10 games at home. Last season, they pushed Notre Dame around pretty good, beating them 77-56 and holding Mike Brey’s team to just 36% from the field. Under Leonard Hamilton, this team defends and pushes the pace. They get shots up with an average possession length of under 15 seconds, and they are hitting almost 57% of their two-point attempts, which is 10th best in the nation. Not only do they have depth, able to use anywhere from 10 to 12 players on any given occasion, but they are also a big team. Their average height his second in the nation, and they start no one shorter then 6-4. The leading scorer is Dwayne Bacon, averaging 17.8 points per game, and he has had 27 straight games in which he has scored in double figures.
BetAnySports patrons should know that when looking at this game, both of these teams seek to force the other squad to turn the ball over, very proactively, but Notre Dame takes care of the ball better, committing a turnover less frequently than all but two teams at the 351 in Division I ball. Expect them to make liberal use of Temple Gibbs and Rex Pflueger, who have combined for a 3.5-to-1 assist-turnover ratio.
This is a balanced lineup for the Irish as well, with good shooters. Perhaps the best is Steve Vasturia (14.7 ppg), who has hit 44% from beyond the three-point arc. Notre Dame is almost 40% as a team from long-range, but the guy who could do some business on the inside his Bonzie Colson, a burly 6-5 forward who tallies 15.8 points per game along with 10.9 rebounds.
Notre Dame will have a rather sizable edge at the free-throw line. They have hit 82.8% of their shots from the charity stripe, best in the nation. Meanwhile, Florida State is only 69.2% accurate, and that is slightly under the national average. The psychological factor will be big for the Seminoles, after they lost 96-83 to North Carolina, because they were out-rebounded by a huge 56-34 margin and gave up 21 offensive rebounds. This broke their 12-game winning streak, which had elevated them to the #10 spot in the Associated Press poll and 12th in the Coaches’ rankings.
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