(1) UConn vs. (5) Purdue - Sweet 16 Showdown
by Ian James
With Round 2 in the books and only the 12th seeded Connecticut right now, as they are running over anyone in their path.
They picked up their third-largest victory ever in NCAA tournament history in the first round, a 103-47 shellacking over Chattanooga in the West Regional. They then made a very good Texas A&M squad look ordinary with a 92-66 second round win, which makes their two game point total 195. WOW.
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Connecticut’s head coach Jim Calhoun wasn't present for the Huskies first-round game, so he watched his club cruise to victory from a hospital bed while being treated for dehydration. But the 66-year-old Calhoun was back to lead his No. 1 Huskies to rout over Texas A&M on Saturday, collecting his 803rd career in doing so.
For the season, the Huskies are ranked 29th nationally in offensive field goal percentage shooting 47.2% while attempting 58.6 shots per game. The Huskies shooting percentages include 67.3% for free throw percentage and 34.2% for three point percentage.
They were obviously lights out in their dismantling of Chattanooga in Round 1 but it was surprising to see UConn posting an offensive explosion in back-to-back games. All the trends pointed to the opposite as the Huskies were 3-8-1 ATS in their last 12 after scoring 100 points or more in their previous game and 7-19-1 ATS after scoring more than 90.
Next up for UConn is a date with the 5th ranked Purdue Boilermakers on March 26th, 2009 at 3:00 PM EST. The winner heads to the Elite Eight and is one step closer a birth into the 2009 Final Four in Detroit, Michigan.
Purdue got this far with wins over UNI in the first round and then a narrow victory over Washington in round two, 76-74.
There isn’t much analysis needed as far is who is going to win this game, Connecticut is going to make another good team look bad. So lets take a look at the BetUS Sportsbook line for this game and see how many points Purdue is getting.
Right now UConn is a -6 ½ point favorite for this Sweet 16 matchup and I can’t stress this enough, TAKE UCONN!!!
They are going to walk right through Purdue to the Elite 8 with a probable showdown with the Memphis Tigers. First things first though, destroy Purdue.
The Lock Pick: UConn (-6 ½ )
