Weekly College Basketball Preview (1/13/25)
In this week’s college basketball preview, we will travel down south to SEC country for the majority of the top 25 matchups. Not surprising during a season in which 9 of the AP’s current Top 25 teams hail from the conference and expected to continue as long as the rankings continue to be weighted heavily this way. For the time being, the SEC is college basketball’s sun, and the rest of the conferences are orbiting around it.
January 14th, 2025
#21 Ole Miss @ #4 Alabama (-12.5)
Ole Miss travels to Tuscaloosa for a showdown with the Crimson Tide after a double-digit victory over LSU last weekend. Meanwhile, Alabama enters the game on the heels of a hard-fought road victory over a top 10 Texas A&M team.
Ole Miss is 3-0 in conference play coming into this matchup but two of those victories were against foes currently winless in the conference. Alabama, on the other hand, is currently on an 8-game win streak that includes wins over Texas A&M, Oklahoma and North Carolina.
We think Alabama, playing in front of a packed Coleman Coliseum crowd, wins a tough game here.
WINNER: ALABAMA
#15 Mississippi State @ #1 Auburn (-7.5)
The Mississippi State Bulldogs, coming off a 5-point loss at home to Kentucky, enter this matchup against the #1 team in the country. Just like their Iron Bowl rivals Alabama, Auburn comes into this game riding an 8-game winning streak, but the last two games against Texas and South Carolina were competitive games. Auburn’s Johni Broome is expected to miss this matchup after sustaining a sprained ankle in the second half of the South Carolina game.
Even without Broome in the lineup, Auburn has 5 players that average double figures (granted, low double figures) compared to 2 for Mississippi State. And while Mississippi State does now have a size advantage, we think Auburn’s overall depth, coupled with playing in front of a friendly Neville Arena crowd, should help Auburn to prevail. Trust in Bruce Pearl here.
WINNER: AUBURN
#11 Texas A&M @ #8 Kentucky (-6.5)
The Kentucky Wildcats welcome the Texas A&M Aggies to Rupp Arena for a nearly Top 10 matchup. The Aggies are looking to rebound from a tough 6-point loss to Alabama while the Wildcats are looking to add a second quality win in a row to their after beating Mississippi State by 5 on the road last weekend.
While not always the most aesthetically pleasing basketball, Texas A&M plays a stingy brand of defense that makes teams work for every point. We love scrappy teams, and the Aggies showed what they are made of in their last game against the Crimson Tide. They can compete against anyone in the league when they are playing well. But we are still not sure that they are really in the top tier of the SEC, despite their record and current ranking.
Kentucky is good, Kentucky is deep, and Kentucky is tested. Thy beat Florida at home, lost to an underrated Georgia team on the road and rebounded to be Mississippi State in their last 3 games. Mark Pope will need to have the boys focused and not looking ahead to their matchup with Alabama later in the week (brutal scheduling week), but we have faith in them.
We think the Cats are the pick at home here.
WINNER: KENTUCKY
January 15th, 2025
#9 Kansas @ #2 Iowa State (-6.5)
Busting out of the SEC with our first non-SEC game preview of the week! The Kansas Jayhawks, coming off three straight double-digit victories, face off against the Iowa State Cyclones at Hilton Coliseum. Iowa State has won eleven games in a row, but their last win came against Texas Tech in overtime so it’s not like the Cyclones haven’t been challenged during the streak.
Iowa State is deep and talented, and their lone loss of the season was a 2-point loss to Auburn at the Maui Invitational. It is hard to predict anything other than an Iowa State win here, even against a top 10 opponent that beat Duke earlier in the year. So, we’re not going to. We think Iowa State wins this one.
WINNER: IOWA STATE
#23 Georgia @ #6 Tennessee (-11.5)
1,2,3…back to the SEC. That didn’t take long. We head back to the South where the Georgia Bulldogs, winners of their last 2 conference games, travel to Knoxville to take on the Volunteers at the Food City Center (yes, that is the name of the arena).
Georgia was picked to finish 12th in the SEC in preseason polls so their 14-2 (2-1 in conference) is a bit of a surprise. They lost at Ole Miss 10 days ago before bouncing back to defeat Kentucky and Oklahoma at home. Freshman forward and expected NBA lottery pick Asa Newell leads the way for the Bulldogs, averaging team highs in both points and rebounds.
Tennessee only has one loss this season, a 30-point drubbing by Florida in Gainesville. Tennessee shot 21% from the field, 14% from the 3-point line and 60% from the charity stripe in that one. Credit Florida’s defense there, but Tennessee is not going to have another game like that offensively. And after squeaking by Texas in their last game, we expect the Vols to be determined to prove a point here against Georgia.
We are predicting a Volunteers win here against the Bulldogs.
WINNER: TENNESSEE
January 18th, 2025
#4 Alabama @ #8 Kentucky
This one is going to be fun!
Both teams are coming off home games against Top 25 conference opponents, have top 3 scoring offenses (Alabama is leading the nation with 91 points per game while Kentucky is #3 with 89 ppg) and give up bunches of points on defense (how could you not at the pace they’re playing?).
Honestly, this is a coin-flip game, and we hate to have to pick a winner. We generally prefer the home team in a game like this, but Alabama is battle-tested and won’t get rattled at Rupp. Mark Sears (at the time of publication) has scored 20 or more points in his last 4 games (he actually averages 22 ppg on the road and 17 ppg at home). We are going to predict that to continue.
Roll Tide!
WINNER: ALABAMA
#1 Auburn @ #23 Georgia
Same song, different verse. Just like the Saturday matchup between Alabama and Kentucky, Auburn and Georgia play on Saturday and also had matchups earlier in the week against Top 25 opponents.
Auburn’s high-scoring offense against Georgia’s stifling defense. Preseason national darling versus an overlooked team picked to finish near the bottom of the conference.
The only thing we are missing is what we would have been a great matchup of 2 of the Southeastern Conference’s best bigs, Auburn’s senior Johni Broome and Georgia’s freshman phenom Asa Newell.
Georgia has already developed a taste for playing spoiler at home against higher-rated opponents after knocking off Kentucky. We think they are going to do it again here.
WINNER: GEORGIA
#17 Purdue @ #13 Oregon
The Purdue Boilermakers enter this tilt on a roll, winning 5 straight games by an average margin of more than 20 points; however, prior to that win streak, Purdue played 2 home games against quality SEC opponents, Texas A&M and Auburn, and lost both. Purdue is a good team and capable of beating anyone on a given night, but they are not currently in the same tier as some of the other teams we’ve mentioned so far.
Oregon comes into this one only 1 game behind Purdue in the Big 10 standings, but their recent games could not be any different. A 1 point win over Penn State, a 2 point win over Ohio State, a 4 point win over Maryland and a 32 point loss to Illinois. Give credit to Oregon for winning close games, but they are not exactly rolling.
That being said, this is a great matchup between two teams that can make some noise in the tournament come March. They are just not in the same tier as the other teams we have talked about. We think Purdue comes into this one a little hotter and wins despite playing on the road in Oregon.
WINNER: PURDUE
#21 Ole Miss @ #15 Mississippi State
We’ve got an Egg Bowl folks! Is it called the Egg Bowl in basketball? I doubt it, but nonetheless we’re calling it the Egg Bowl. After taking on the state of Alabama’s best teams earlier in the week, Mississippi’s top two programs face off against each other in Starkville for Magnolia State bragging rights.
We’ll know a lot more about both of these teams after Tuesday’s matchups (Ole Miss vs. Alabama and Mississippi State vs. Auburn), but we cannot wait for those games to make a prediction here. They are ranked within 4 spots of each other in the KenPom rankings and are separated by 1 game in the conference standings. Both teams have won 4 of their last 5 as well.
In a rivalry game between two fairly even opponents, we’ll take the home team here.
WINNER: MISSISSIPPI STATE
January 19th, 2025
#19 Illinois @ #12 Michigan State
Back in the Big 10 for the final Top 25 matchup of the week, we have got Illinois traveling to East Lansing to take on the Spartans. Sparty comes into this game on a 9 game winning streak (at the time of publication) while Illinois had won 5 straight before losing to USC at home by 10.
Both are well coached, fundamentally sound college basketball teams. Expect a bruiser of a game, and if we were betting men, we would probably say to take the under regardless of what it is.
We cannot wait to see Illinois’ top offensive player, freshman Kasparas Jakucionis, try to free himself up against whatever defense Tom Izzo is cooking up for him.
We hate to pick against Tom Izzo and Michigan State, especially when they are home and the higher seeded team. But we are going to do it anyway. We’ll probably regret it on Sunday night.
WINNER: ILLINOIS
