The Kansas State Wildcats are 3-1 straight up and 4-0 against the spread over their last four games. The Wildcats will take on the Wake Forest Demon Deacons for a spot in the NCAA Tournament this Tuesday.
March Madness odds for March 14: Wake Forest, New Orleans play-in games betting favorites
Tuesday features two NCAA Tournament play-in games in Dayton, with Wake Forest and New Orleans set as betting favorites against Kansas State and Mount St. Mary’s.
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Wake Forest is going off as a slim 1-point betting favorite in Tuesday’s late game at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com. In the early game, the New Orleans Privateers are a 1.5-point favorite taking on the Mount St. Mary’s Mountaineers.
From the start of January to the end of February, Kansas State didn’t look much like a tournament team with a 5-11 SU and 6-8-2 ATS record. But a 3-1 SU and 4-0 ATS run to end the season, which included an outright neutral-site win over Baylor and a hard-fought one-point loss to West Virginia, tipped the scales in Kansas State’s favor to get the Wildcats into this play-in game.
The winner of this game will earn an 11-seed and take on 6-seed Cincinnati on Friday.
Wake Forest also ended the season on a high note, going 3-1 SU and ATS over its last four games, with upset wins at home against Louisville and on the road against Virginia Tech. The Demon Deacons have plenty of firepower on offense and rank 16th in the nation in scoring with 82.7 points per game, but don’t do much on defense ranking 301st and allowing 77.9 points per game.
As you might expect from a team that is strong on offense and weak on defense, Wake Forest plays to plenty of OVERs. The OVER is 15-2 in the Demon Deacons’ last 17 games per the OddsShark College Basketball Database.
New Orleans and Mount St. Mary’s took similar paths to this play-in game, winning both the regular season title and tournaments of their respective conferences.
The Privateers edged out Texas A&M-Corpus Christi in overtime to lock up the Southland Tournament and the automatic bid that came with it. The Mountaineers survived a first-round scare in the Northeast Conference Tournament against Sacred Heart before cruising to easy wins and covers over Robert Morris and Saint Francis.
The winner of this play-in game will be a 16-seed and will face Villanova on Thursday.
