College Basketball Betting: West Virginia vs. Kansas Odds, Big 12 Championship

The two best teams in the Big 12 during the regular season will square off for a third time in Saturday’s Big 12 tournament championship game when the top-seeded Kansas Jayhawks (29-4) face the second-seeded West Virginia Mountaineers (26-7).

The Jayhawks and Mountaineers split two meetings earlier this year, with each winning handily and covering the spread on their own home court. Kansas opened as a three-point betting favorite for Saturday's matchup.

Kansas was a heavy +130 favorite (bet $100 to win $130) to take home the Big 12 tournament title before it started at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark, after earning at least a share of the regular-season championship for the 12th straight year.

The top-ranked Jayhawks had a fairly easy time getting to the title game for the third time in four seasons, routing the eighth-seeded Kansas State Wildcats 85-63 as 12.5-point favorites before taking out the fifth-seeded Baylor Bears 70-66 in the semifinals on Friday but falling short of covering the spread as consensus 7.5-point chalk.

Still, they remain on track for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament and should get one regardless of whether or not they beat West Virginia in this spot.

The Mountaineers were the +225 second choice to win the Big 12 tournament behind Kansas, and they are making their first appearance in the championship game. They edged the third-seeded Oklahoma Sooners 69-67 as one-point favorites in the other semifinal and were very fortunate that Buddy Hield did not have an extra 10th of a second to make the game-winning shot.

Oklahoma’s Hield, the Big 12 Player of the Year, connected on a miraculous basket from near half court right after time expired that would have advanced his Sooners to play the Jayhawks instead.

West Virginia did a phenomenal job defending Hield throughout the game, though, limiting him to only six points on 1-of-8 shooting from the field.

While Kansas brings a 13-game winning streak into this meeting with the Mountaineers, the team has struggled in the series lately. The Jayhawks are just 2-3 straight up and 1-4 against the spread in the past five meetings, according to the Odds Shark College Basketball Database, with both wins coming at home as big favorites.