Grambling vs Northern Illinois Prediction & Picks: College Basketball 11/1-2

Rock Hill, SC is the setting for Grambling vs Northern Illinois, set for Monday, November 2 at 12:00 AM PT / 3:00 AM ET. Northern Illinois was a 4.5-point favorite when the guys taped on October 29, and all three of them laid it. Here is the reasoning from the College Basketball Picks episode.

Grambling vs Northern Illinois Odds

Northern Illinois was the 4.5-point favorite over Grambling when the guys taped on October 29. They said they had no organic number to check it against, so they projected 4.5 for Northern Illinois themselves.

Our Picks

Ryan Kramer (@KramerCentric): Northern Illinois -4.5
Sean Green (@SeanTGreen): Northern Illinois -4.5
Colby Dant (@thecolbyd): Northern Illinois -4.5

Colby set the terms. Normally you would take Grambling, he said, because Northern Illinois has been bad lately. But Northern Illinois is joining the Horizon League with a brand new head coach and a brand new roster, and the coach brought four of his players with him from Northern Michigan. Grambling, on the other side, lost about 90% of its roster. Colby noted a returning guard, a handful of transfers and a 7’1″ center, then said he would trust the continuity, even a thin version of it, and lay the number.

Sean said he would usually fade a head coach in his first game. Then he bought Colby’s point: the coach is bringing the majority of his team, and Grambling is turning over far more. Ryan added that the Northern Michigan group was not an elite Division II team, though it had made the D2 tournament in each of the last four years. He also read a line from the coach’s Wikipedia page about a dog and decided that was a positive.

Nobody pretended to know much here. Sean said an AI preview tool found little public roster info on either team, so this was a low-information game and the guys leaned on the one thing they could measure, which was who still had a team in place. Ryan put it his way: when a coach brings an entire team up from a lower level, you bet on him early in the season. By the end of the segment it was three for three on Northern Illinois.

Hear the full breakdown on the College Basketball Picks: Sunday 11/1 & Monday 11/2 episode, or listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Watch every game on YouTube, and download the SGPN app at sg.pn/links. See all our College Basketball Picks.