Recent Play Details

4% Take UCLA (#816)

Northwestern has wildly overachieved this season considering their significant weakness putting the biscuit in the basket; the #316th ranked team in offensive efficiency in Ken Pom’s ratings.  They’ve made it this far for three reasons. 

First, after Purdue’s early exit yesterday and Northwestern’s second place finish in the Big 10, maybe it’s time to devalue this conference a bit.  Yes, it was a deep conference, but the supposedly elite teams weren’t elite —maybe the Big 10 just wasn’t that good in 2023.   That would certainly explain Northwestern’s outlier results here in 2023.

Second, Northwestern rarely got any opponent’s best shot; consistently overlooked by their foes focusing on supposedly tougher matchups.  Even their first round win over Boise comes with an asterisk, given the long term struggles for Mountain West teams (another overvalued conference in March) in the Big Dance. 

Third, Northwestern was pretty lucky, stealing a whole bunch of games late.  That works in tight Big 10 affairs that come down to the final minutes. It doesn’t work so well in games that aren’t close late, particularly against teams that can light up the scoreboard – teams like UCLA.

Mick Cronin’s Bruins are arguably undervalued here – it’s not like the PAC-12 had a great regular season and UCLA is the last team standing from this conference after a dismal opening round.  That said, UCLA was the class of the PAC-12 all year, and they’re loaded; quite capable of a Final Four Run. 

Ken Pom has the Bruins as the #1 adjusted defensive efficiency team in the country (and #22 on offense). That’s bad news for the Wildcats on both ends of the floor – they’re not trading points with UCLA and I don’t expect them to shut the Bruins down either.  At some point in this game, expect UCLA to make a run that Northwestern can’t answer.  Chalk worth laying.  Take UCLA

Line Parameter: 4% at -7.5 or lower, 3% at -8 or higher