Conference USA Championship: Houston vs. UTEP Odds & Pick: March 13th 2010

Houston Cougars vs. UTEP Miners
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If Conference USA ultimately has a chance of being a multiple-bid league to the NCAA Tournament, it’s probably going to take a Houston Cougars (18-15, 14-16 ATS) upset of the UTEP Miners (26-5, 14-13 ATS). Just one day after narrowly escaping with a huge upset over Memphis, Houston fired back with a comfortable eight-point win over Southern Miss. The Miners certainly asserted themselves as the best college basketball betting team in this tournament on Friday when they took out the hosts of this tournament, the Tulsa Golden Hurricane, by a 75-61 final tally.

G Aubrey Coleman has been one of the top scorers in the entire country all season long. After dropping 27 on the Golden Eagles, Coleman’s scoring average reached a lofty 25.9 points per game. He has put at least 25 points on five of his L/7 foes. Coleman and G Kelvin Lewis are the only scorers on this team that are averaging double digits. The Cougars have a very prolific scoring offense, but sometimes they can be awfully inconsistent. Even though they’re only shooting 41.8 percent from the floor for the season, they’re averaging 78.7 points per game.

The Miner boast a prolific scorer of their own in this Conference USA betting bash in the form of G Randy Culpepper. Culpepper snapped out of his funk of back-to-back poor outings by scoring 21 against Tulsa. He’s averaging 17.9 points per game this season, but has scored an average of 22.4 PPG in his L/8. As a team, UTEP is shooting a rock solid 47.6 percent from the field, which makes it a fantastic scoring threat every night it steps on the court.

Houston was the most recent team to knock off the Miners this year, winning 75-65 at home on January 13th. However, when these teams played each other in February in El Paso, UTEP got its revenge, winning by seven. The Cougars covered that day by the hook, which marked their third straight win against the NCAA basketball spreads in this Lone Star State rivalry.

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