Frank LorenzoThe best game of the Thursday March Madness lineup has the Arizona State Sun Devils clashing against the Texas Longhorns, at 9:40 PM ET at BMO Harris Bradley Center, for the second round of the tournament.
Arizona State has dropped five of the last seven matches, including a 79-58 beating by Stanford in the opening of the Pac-12 tournament. “We had plenty of opportunities,” Arizona State coach Herb Sendek said. “We tried to do things late in the game, but it just got away from us.”
“We’ve had horrible starts our last three games,” Sun Devils center Jordan Bachynski said. “We have to figure out what’s wrong and adjust accordingly.”
The Texas Longhorns have alternated wins and losses over the last six games, and they were horrible outplayed 86-69 by Baylor in the Big 12 tournament. “You really have to give Baylor a lot of credit in the fact that they executed offensively,” Texas coach Rick Barnes said, “and we didn’t really do the things we needed to do.”
The Texans Longhorns are 1.5 point favorites in the March Madness point spread. The Longhorns are 0-4 ATS in their last 4 NCAA Tournament games, 1-4 ATS in their last 5 games vs. a team with a winning % above .600, and 2-9 ATS in their last 11 NCAA Tournament games as a favorite of 0.5-6.5.
The Sun Devils are 3-7-1 ATS in their last 11 games overall, and 5-16 ATS in their last 21 neutral site games.
