College Basketball Player Prop extraordinaire Mike Cutri (who is currently up over +100 units betting player props this season) unveils his best player prop for each round of March Madness’s opening weekend. It’s the most fun and exciting time of the year for College Basketball, so let’s dive into the data and see where we can beat the books on some prop numbers.
The Pick: J’wan Roberts, Houston – OVER 20.5 PRA (Pts, Rebs & Assts)
To open things up, No. 1 seed in the MidWest region Houston takes on a formidable No. 16 seeded Northern Kentucky. The Norse are known for their tricky 2-3 matchup zone, attempting to force their opponents into using a lot of shot clock and take long contested three-pointers. Looking at the ShotQuality matchup, Northern Kentucky does a pretty good job forcing contested jump shots out of their zone (131st in Defensive Shot Selection) while Houston is perfectly OK letting them fly from three and shows pretty low Shot Making Ability (228th). This won’t be the first time Houston has seen an extended 2-3 zone as they’ve played Tulane twice this season who plays a very similar defensive scheme to the Norse, and the Cougars put up a combined 56 three-pointers in both games.
When you talk about zone, there are two key parts of the zone that are susceptible: good ball movement leading to open three-pointers, and the offensive glass. Looking at Houston’s Shot Quality metrics, they are the 4th best rebounding team in the country which doesn’t bode well for the undersized Norse sitting in that zone and showing the 333rd ranked defensive rebounding rate in the country per KenPom. Who on Houston can take advantage in this matchup? Junior center J’wan Roberts is an absolute beast on the glass for the Cougars showing a 13% offensive rebounding rate and 21% defensive rebounding rate.
I think we see a ton of threes from Houston here against the zone which will lead to a massive amount of offensive rebounds and putbacks for Roberts in particular. In the two matchups against the forementioned Tulane earlier in the season, Houston gobbled up a combined 26 offensive rebounds and Roberts put up 23 combined PRA in the first matchup and an impressive 36 combined PRA in their second matchup. If you’re worried at all about Roberts’ finishing ability, Shot Quality has him rated in the 78th percentile in finishing at the rim, so he should have no problem finishing against the soft Norse interior after gobbling up some offensive rebounds. With Houston projected to score 71.6 and Northern Kentucky projected 49.6 per SQ, Roberts should be able to grab a ton of misses on the defense glass as well and maybe even mix in a few assists. He should fly over this number.
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