March Madness Pick – Lehigh vs Kansas

Well, this is the game that has the largest March Madness betting point spread in the first round, as the Jayhawks are favored by 25.5 points. In a game like this, there may be a tendency for one team to be looking past another, and since there is no reason for the favorite to gratuitously embarrass its opponent, those big numbers are often hazardous.

Lehigh Mountain Hawks (22-10 SU, 2-0 ATS) vs. Kansas Jayhawks (32-2 SU, 14-16-1 ATS)

NCAA Tournament @ Oklahoma City
Thursday, March 18 - 9:30 PM ET
: KANSAS -25.5

Here are some of the trends as they relate to this matchup:

• LEH has won its last five games SU
• KAN has covered four of its last five games
• KAN has won 18 of its last 19 games SU

At this point you have to ask the question as to whether the underdog has the kind of weapons to make things relatively interesting from the point spread standpoint.

Bill Self has found his team as a favorite of 20 points or more on ten separate occasions this season. Kansas covered against Hofstra, Tennessee Tech, LaSalle, Texas Tech and Radford, while failing against Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa State, Colorado and Oklahoma. It seemed as if they handled the number against this level of opponent.

Lehigh didn't get a chance to play many good teams, and they lost by double digits to Richmond, Stony Brook (which just put up a fight against Illinois in the NIT), Dayton and St. Joseph's.

One would certainly expect that Kansas will play more people than usual; after all, it is not likely that Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich, the two All-Americans, are going to play more than 25 minutes. Neither will freshman guard Xavier Henry. The problem with a team like Kansas is that it is deep enough to where the second unit has the ability to actually extend a lead. Markieff Morris, Tyrel Reed, Thomas Robinson and Brady Morningstar, who started only 12 games between them this season, are still superior to most of what Lehigh can put on the court.

The guy for the Jayhawks to watch out for is CJ McCollum. While the aforementioned Henry was certainly a prize package as a recruit, it was McCollum who was the highest scoring freshman in college basketball this season, averaging 18.9 ppg, and being named the Patriot League's player of the year. He's also a dangerous three-point shooter (43%). Can Kansas focus its defensive efforts on him and get away with it? Probably.

One thing you may want to keep in mind is that Self remembers all too well the dejection this program suffered in 2005, when another Patriot League champion, this one out of Bucknell, came into this same building (the Ford Center in Oklahoma City) as a #14 seed and pulled off an upset. He will remind his team of that. Revenge over the Patriot League? Wow!

Yeah, in a small play we'll lay the points with Kansas, the 25.5-point favorite in round one of March Madness.

JAY'S PLAY: KANSAS -25.5 ***
(Graded on a scale of 1-4 stars)