The 2021 NCAA tournament is finally here, and will tip off with the First Four on Thursday.
Our experts Josh Appelbaum, Tim Murray, David Stall and Greg Peterson give their best bets for Thursday s opening four games.
Odds are consensus lines from
No. 16 Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers vs. No. 16 Texas Southern Tigers (-1, 133)
Murray: The first game of the 2021 NCAA tournament will have the SWAC champion, Texas Southern, facing the winner of the Northeast Conference, Mt. St. Mary’s. The Mountaineers defeated top-seeded Bryant in the NEC Tournament thanks in part to a tremendous defensive game plan. The Mount has tremendous size for a team from the NEC; their starting frontcourt is Mezie Offurrum (6-foot-8), Nana Opoku (6-9) and Malik Jefferson (6-9). Despite Bryant ranking 14th in the country in adjusted tempo according to Ken Pom, the Mountaineers dictated the pace of the game holding Bryant to just 68 points, 16 points below its season average. Opoku, the NEC defensive
Here in the Tuley’s Takes home office, we can’t stop thinking about a year ago at this time. Our biggest concern was how to handicap NCAA tournament games with no fans in the stands, but then we not only lost the Big Dance, we also lost the major-conference tournaments.
We’ve had a lot of success in Championship Week in recent years, so it was disappointing not to be able to continue that. Now, of course, we have this great week of wall-to-wall basketball and will see how it plays out with no or limited fans, but at least we have games and conference futures to handicap.