B1G Pick of the Day: Northwestern to lose

Purdue is again playing early out in Hawaii, and they killed Missouri .

Yesterday I predicted that Indiana would lose at home to Eastern Washington. And it happened. So I might as well stay on the horse. Today's mystery line is Northwestern -8 against Miami of Ohio. Northwestern is 4-0, but that includes one-possession home wins over Elon and North Florida, and a 7-point home win over Houston Baptist. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Their one "good" win is a 13-point win at Brown.

Miami is no good, but neither are the Wildcats. I don't see Northwestern winning this one by much. In fact, they are overdue for a loss, so I'll go ahead and call this one for Miami straight up.

If the excitement of Northwestern-Miami is too much for you, you could settle for Maryland (27 in T-Rank) v. Iowa State (20) or Villanova (12) v. Michigan (21). These are the top two TTQ games of the day. Both the Big Ten teams are about 4.5 point underdogs, and I think both will lose. But these could be really good games.

Green Bay (72) plays Evansville (91) in an under-the-radar bracket-buster type game. T-Rank has Green Bay two-point favorites; Vegas says 3.5. It would be a nice win for Green Bay, which we can cheer for to help the Badgers' RPI. (Not that the Badgers are going to need any help.)

Miami FL plays Charlotte again. You might recall that Miami just beat Charlotte by 19 on Sunday, in the Championship of some tournament. Now they are playing again in a non-bracketed game of this same tournament. Weird. Anyhow, Miami has been one of the breakout teams of the season, and they're all the way up to number 10 in the T-Rank. A road win over Florida does wonders. This will be a real test for them though—few things are harder in sports than mustering up the energy to play a team that you just beat handily. And this game is at Charlotte. I expect a close game, and I'll actually be pretty impressed if Miami wins.

Going to be a fun week of basketball and football and food! And drinking!