College Basketball Picks and March Madness Best Bets

Donovan Dent has really been at the wheel of this UCLA offense since late January, handing out eight or more assists in seven of the past 10 games. He had 11 dimes versus Rutgers and is projected for 9+ against a Scarlett Knights ranked 318th in opponent assist-to-FGM ratio. The Bruins have had a couple days of practice to fine tune the offense and sit No. 8 in assist rate.

The UCLA Bruins finished the final 10 games of Big Ten play with the seventh best net rating and topped the conference in that metric over the final five contests. A big part of that boost was 3-point shooting. UCLA upped its activity from outside while also improving its success, knocking down almost 40% of 3-point attempts in the final five games.

Georgetown is without its leading scorer, KJ Lewis (14.9 ppg), leaving a massive void, as he also leads the team in usage rate (28.3%) and BPR (+5.69).

Who will step up? Former top recruit Vincent Iwuchukwu scored 17 points in the First Round, making it nine times in his team’s last 11 games that he’s scored at least 12 points.

Villanova has soft interior defense, ranking 223rd in shooting proximity and 222nd in defensive rebounding rate. The Wildcats have upped the pace lately, and opportunities will be available for Iwuchuckukwu down low.

Even without Caleb Wilson, UNC's Big Cut & Roll has still cooked, ranking in the top 5% of the country. They’ll go against a Clemson defense that's in the bottom 30% nationally defensively against that action. Now flip it around.

Clemson's two best actions are Post-Up and transition, and UNC is elite defensively against both. Carolina has an answer for everything Clemson runs.

Both the Oklahoma Sooners and the Texas A&M Aggies thrive from long distance offensively. Oklahoma takes 3-pointers at the fourth-highest rate in the SEC while making them 38.7% of the time in conference play, tops in toughest league in the country. Meanwhile, Texas A&M shoots 3-pointers at the second-highest rate in the SEC while making them 35.3% of the time, a middling percentage but one that should tick upward against the Sooners.

The Horned Frogs have won six straight, but only one of those came against a Quad 1 opponent. They pushed the Jayhawks into overtime in Lawrence in January by shooting 15-35 from deep.

Considering they're second-last in the conference in 3PT% (32.3%) and Kansas is 10th in the country in 3-point defense (30%), that won't happen again. TCU's defense is heavily reliant on forcing turnovers and ranks just 13th in conference play in opponent 2PT% (54.2%). They won't stop a Kansas attack that takes care of the ball and has four players averaging more than 13.0 ppg.