College Basketball Picks: Sunday 11/1 & Monday 11/2 Recap
Sean Green (@SeanTGreen) and Ryan Kramer (@KramerCentric) are joined by Colby Dant (@thecolbyd) for college basketball picks on opening Sunday and Monday, from Notre Dame and Villanova in Rome to Purdue and Gonzaga in Vegas. Colby Dant locks Notre Dame plus 7.5, while Ryan Kramer sticks with favorites like High Point minus 7.5.
Simmons To Chicago And A 76-Team Field
Ryan Kramer shows up with way too many tabs open, which is how you know college hoops is back. Before the first tip, there is also news for his Bears futures. Chicago lands Jeffrey Simmons, arguably the best defensive tackle in the game, sending 2027 and 2028 first-round picks plus a 2027 fourth and getting a fifth-round pick back. Sean Green calls it a good deal for the Bears.
Colby Dant joins to set up the season, and the headline is a 76-team NCAA tournament, on the women’s side too. The opening round now runs 12 games on Tuesday and Wednesday. Those games feature the 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers and the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams. Ryan Kramer hates that part. So the 15 and 16 seeds everybody loves now have to win an extra game just to reach the real bracket. Sean Green admits 64 was plenty, then admits he will watch every extra game anyway. Northern Illinois also leaves the MAC for the Horizon League, which the guest sees as a better path to the tournament, and the Pac-12 is back.
Opening Night College Basketball Picks From Rome To Rock Hill
The season opens in Rome, where Villanova lays seven and a half against Notre Dame on Sunday morning. Villanova has Luigi Suigo, a 7-foot-3 Italian, playing in his native country, and a buddy of the show notes that the Pope went to Villanova. None of it moves the guys. Colby Dant loves fading Kevin Millar and likes Notre Dame’s lineup with Braden Smith. Sean Green points to Virginia beating Villanova 93-71 in an exhibition. Seven and a half is also a lot for the first game of the year. Then Ryan Kramer brings the data, because KenPom sits at 7 and Torvik at 6.5. All three take Notre Dame plus the points.
Then it’s over to Rock Hill, South Carolina, for the Field of 68’s 24 hours of college basketball. Colby Dant will be in the building with Moneyline Mack, Troy Chung and John from Youngstown. Sunday’s 11:59 p.m. tip is High Point minus seven and a half against Liberty, and Torvik and KenPom both make it bigger. So Ryan Kramer lays it. High Point ranks 61st in KenPom to Liberty’s 139th, and he expects the crowd to be lit. The guest leans the other way. Liberty went 26-8 last season, runs the Tony Bennett pack line and returns a lot of production. That style is hard to mimic in practice, and Sean Green agrees seven and a half is too many for a decent team on a neutral floor. Give him Liberty.
Grambling and Northern Illinois has no market number yet, so the guys project Northern Illinois at minus 4.5. Usually a brand-new coach in his first game is a fade. This one is different. The new Northern Illinois coach came from Northern Michigan and brought four of his players, and not one player is back from last year’s roster. Grambling, meanwhile, lost 90 percent of its roster. So Sean Green argues Northern Illinois actually has more continuity, and continuity is what matters this early. Ryan Kramer says any time a coach brings an entire team up from a lower level, he is betting on them early in the season. All three lay it with Northern Illinois.
Grinding Through The Overnight Games In Rock Hill
The 6 a.m. Eastern game has Merrimack projected at minus four against App State, and it splits the room. Ryan Kramer lays it with Merrimack because App State is a football program, and he doesn’t think it cares about basketball this time of year. Joe Gallo is also coming off his best year and runs what coaches call the best zone in America. Colby Dant still likes App State. Dustin Kearns is one of the better coaches in the Sun Belt, and his roster mixes veteran guards with real height at 7-foot-2 and 7 feet. Sean Green takes the four too, figuring the App State fans are built for an all-nighter.
Queens comes in projected at minus one at Winthrop, and Sean Green starts on the home team. His case is that Winthrop sleeps in its own beds while the visitors make the trip down from New York. Then he learns Queens is in Charlotte, just up the road, and the travel handicap goes out the window. Colby Dant calls Queens a personal play. Grant Leonard is in year six, and Avante Parker, Jordan Watford, Isaiah Henry and Reed Celestine are back for what could be the program’s best team in a while. Winthrop does have preseason all-conference guard Spence Sims, but the guys all end up on the Royals.
McNeese is projected to lay three against UAB, and the projections from the numbers guys are all over the place. Both rosters are mostly new. Andy Kennedy at UAB lives in the transfer portal and the junior college ranks, and about 80 percent of his roster is new, while McNeese has built the same way since Will Wade. So Colby Dant calls it a coaching handicap. He trusts Kennedy’s team to be more cohesive, especially after an exhibition against Ole Miss. Sean Green also wants the three points, and Ryan Kramer adds a simpler reason: it is football season, and the guys are not taking the Cowboys. UAB plus three.
Fake Neutral Sites And A 25-Point Spread
Florida lays six and a half against Miami in Tampa, a neutral site neither school calls home, and Colby Dant has had enough of these. Schools schedule them because they count as neutral-site games in the metrics. That protects them from losing a home game, and he says it has been proven to help seeding. Fans pay for it, though. A Tampa crowd will probably be half empty, and Ohio State against BYU in Salt Lake City is the same trick. Sean Green agrees the home atmosphere is the best thing about college sports. Ryan Kramer only buys a neutral site with a real gimmick, like a doubleheader in New York or an actual tournament.
On the game itself, Ryan Kramer reads off Todd Golden’s early-season results against real teams. The list includes losses to Florida Atlantic, Xavier, UConn, Duke and Arizona, so he takes Miami. The other two stay on the Gators, the preseason number one. Miami brought in Malik Reneau and eight transfers, and Sean Green thinks that is a lot to get working in game one against Florida. He also points out Florida beat Miami early last time. Colby Dant likes the job Miami’s coach is doing and sees the Canes as an ACC contender, but game one in Tampa belongs to Florida. Lay the six and a half.
Michigan is projected at minus 25 at home against Oakland. Dusty May left after winning a national championship to coach the Mavericks, going from almost $5 million a year to eight and a half million, and Mike Boynton steps up from the staff. Colby Dant thinks Boynton is a good coach who deserves a second life. But Michigan lost three first-round picks, and Sean Green doesn’t see that production getting replaced fast enough to cover 25 against an in-state rival. Ryan Kramer is also skeptical whenever the next coach comes straight off the bench at a program like Michigan. The guys take Oakland and the points.
Iowa State lays 13 and a half against Memphis in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a spot that looks random until you check the map. It is 270 miles by road from Ames, close enough for Iowa State fans to fill the building, and nobody expects Memphis fans to make the trip. Penny Hardaway has put his own money into the Memphis NIL budget, and Colby Dant likes the talent he brought in, including an A&M transfer. But the crowd edge wins him over. KenPom, the shortest of the projections, still has it at 13. All three lay the big number with Iowa State.
Late Monday Picks From JMU To Rock Hill
JMU hosts Miami of Ohio in a true home game, and with no number posted, the guys project Miami at minus a half. Travis Steele is back at the helm for Miami after a magical run that included a First Four win over SMU. Colby Dant likes Miami on the road because the money the school is spending should pay off, and JMU is still figuring things out. Sean Green takes JMU as a small dog. Everyone is dying to knock off a team coming off that kind of season, and restarting as a road favorite is a tough process. Ryan Kramer sides with Miami, since JMU is a football school in football season.
Back in Rock Hill, Furman is projected at minus 3.5 against Bethune-Cookman, the SWAC favorite under Reggie Theus with Charles Barkley in its NIL collective. Bethune-Cookman brings in 11 transfers and two freshmen, so it is mostly a new team. Furman, meanwhile, has eight players back from a team that was pretty good last year, and it is playing in its home state. Colby Dant suspects the real line lands closer to five and a half. Ryan Kramer says he would lay it up to six. All three are on the Paladins.
Vegas And Salt Lake Close Out The Night
Gonzaga lays four and a half against Purdue at T-Mobile in Las Vegas, the Zags’ home away from home. Purdue has the history, though. Sean Green finds Purdue at 5-0 all time against Gonzaga, including three neutral-site wins in the last four years in Portland, Honolulu and Detroit. Colby Dant adds that Coach Painter returns 10 players, which you rarely see in college hoops. The slide had three and a half, but Ryan Kramer sees mostly four and a half out there, so people are betting Gonzaga. It looks like a close game to him, and the guys all take the points with Purdue.
BYU lays two and a half against Ohio State in Salt Lake City, about 20 minutes from Provo, the exact kind of game Colby Dant hates. He still expects BYU Nation to show up for a preseason top 25 team. Ohio State has real pieces too, with Jake Diebler adding Justin Pippen from Cal and five-star recruit Anthony Thompson. But the guest makes it an altitude play and lays it with BYU. Sean Green agrees, because conditioning is rough early in the season and elevation is a bigger edge now than later. Ryan Kramer takes Ohio State plus the points, since it is Monday of Holy War week and BYU fans are locked in on that.
Arizona lays four and a half against UCLA to close the night in Vegas. UCLA is 22nd in the preseason rankings, and the Bet Detective even grabbed a future on UCLA to win the national title. Nobody here follows him. Colby Dant thinks Tommy Lloyd starts seasons better and will outcoach Mick Cronin, whose teams have trouble with Arizona’s pace. Sean Green adds that Arizona has won its last five in Vegas. Then Ryan Kramer figures UCLA is more likely to be distracted by its football team, while Arizona is always a basketball program first. He makes the number six. Lay it with the Wildcats.
Locks And Dogs To Close The Show
Colby Dant goes first and stretches three locks into four. He takes Notre Dame plus seven and a half in Rome and UAB plus three against McNeese, then adds BYU and Arizona and tells everyone to parlay them. His dog to win outright is App State on the money line against Merrimack, the side he argued for all along. Notre Dame and UAB were unanimous earlier in the show, so he is leaning on spots where the room agreed. BYU is the one where Ryan Kramer went the other way.
Sean Green goes with Oakland plus the points against Michigan, Purdue plus four and a half, BYU minus two and a half and UAB plus three. His dog is Liberty on the money line, a program he says keeps itself in good shape. As he puts it, his partner only plays favorites. Ryan Kramer proves it with High Point minus seven and a half, Arizona minus four and a half and Iowa State minus 13 and a half, then adds Furman minus 3.5. His dog is UAB on the money line, which puts all three of them on UAB against McNeese.
Podcast Chapters
0:00 Download the SGPN App Today!
0:51 Bears Trading for Jeffrey Simmons & Colby Dant
5:16 College Basketball Season Preview: 76 Team Tournament
19:17 Notre Dame vs. Villanova Picks
26:22 Liberty vs. High Point Picks
30:33 Grambling vs. Northern Illinois Picks
35:57 Tuna Salad & Pizzeria Picks
39:15 App State vs. Merrimack Picks
44:03 Winthrop vs. Queens Picks
47:27 UAB vs. McNeese Picks
52:02 Miami vs. Florida Picks
58:08 Oakland vs. Michigan Picks
1:02:48 Memphis vs. Iowa State Picks
1:05:26 Miami of Ohio vs. JMU Picks
1:08:37 Bethune-Cookman vs. Furman Picks
1:13:10 Purdue vs. Gonzaga Picks
1:17:02 Ohio State vs. BYU Picks
1:20:08 Arizona vs. UCLA Picks
1:23:39 Locks and Dogs
1:26:20 Thank You for Participating in the Sports Gambling Podcast
