The Villanova Wildcats, a team on a four-game losing streak, opened as a slight favorite against the No. 9 Marquette Golden Eagles.

Yes, that’s the same Marquette team that just beat Villanova by 13 points on January 15th and the same Villanova team that blew a double-digit halftime lead and fell to Butler on Saturday.

Villanova is currently a 1.5-point favorite at PA sportsbooks and NJ online sports betting, and they’re the topic of a popular trend.

College sports bettors love to think something is up when an unranked team, in this case Villanova, is a favorite against a ranked foe, and the immediate thought is that something is fishy. Is the line telling us something?

Well, unranked home teams are just 11-11 against the spread this season versus ranked away teams, per betting analyst Jared Smith:


However, this is also a Villanova team that is 3-1 ATS against Top 25 opposition. The last cover was on a last-second half-court heave that cut the losing margin against UConn from four points to one.

The Wildcats also covered in their wins over North Carolina and Creighton, both of which were earned in overtime.

Speaking of overtime, Villanova played in four overtime games this season. Tuesday’s game is +1100 to go to overtime if you want to use pizza money on that.

Anyway, back to the actual analysis, the Wildcats are 2-2 ATS in Big East play as a favorite and 7-7 ATS as a favorite this season. It’s important to note that both of the Big East covers as a favorite came against DePaul, who is the worst team among the six power conferences.

Marquette has only been an underdog on four occasions this season and they covered and won outright in three of those games. The Golden Eagles beat Illinois and Kansas outright in November and defeated St. John’s on January 20th as their only time as an underdog in Big East play so far.

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If you rely on trends to make your bet, a lot of the numbers cancel each other out, so then it comes down to picking the better team, which Marquette is.

That said, Villanova is in a back-against-the-wall situation and another top-10 win would resurrect its season and put it back on the right side of the NCAA tournament bubble.

So yeah, you can work your brain into a tightly-wrapped pretzel trying to figure out which side to take.