Editors note: we know that due to the snow in upstate New York, the @IvyLeague games were pushed a day — but that doesn't change Mike's picks!
Not too much that I like on the Friday night college hoops card, but we’ll try.
First, let’s go with an Ivy League teaser. We’ll take Penn -.5 at Columbia, with Princeton +.5 at Cornell. All I’m asking for here is two wins, at places where Penn and Princeton have historically done very well at. And this season Columbia and Cornell are among the worst teams in the Ivies. Heck, we might even try this one on Saturday, when Penn will be at Cornell and Princeton at Columbia. You never know. Penn isn’t great, but they should be good enough here. The Quakers really need to win twice this weekend if they want to have a good chance of making the four-team Ivy tournament at Harvard. And Princeton looks to be maybe the best team in the league, if it’s not Yale or maybe Harvard.
Speaking of which, I was also looking at the Harvard vs. Yale matchup. The line is Harvard getting 5.5, in an obvious rivalry situation, and you could make the case almost both ways. I could tease Harvard to 10.5 and hope for a close one, with a slight chance that it could actually win outright, or move Yale down to a pick-‘em. Just throwing it out there.
And in the Big Ten, let’s go with Illinois laying 3 to visiting Maryland. The Illini seems to be getting better. It should have won at Maryland earlier but pretty much blew it. Terps are good, but they’re better at home. So I’ll take a shot on the revenge and the venue being enough to cover the field goal spread.
Go for it.