College basketball betting Akron Zips vs. Western Michigan Broncos

The MAC Tournament continues on Friday with its semifinals, and the college basketball betting won't get much hotter than this! The Akron Zips will face off with the Western Michigan Broncos.

The Zips faced a stern test from Eastern Michigan on Thursday afternoon, being forced into double overtime before finally taking over. Akron may have a slight chance of reaching the NCAA Tournament as an at-large bid, but that would require all sorts of things going wrong for other teams across the country to happen.

Western Michigan needed a big second half effort to overcome a nine-point halftime deficit to knock off Central Michigan 69-60 to move on to the MAC semifinals.

Akron Zips (23-9, 14-13-2 ATS) vs. Western Michigan Broncos (18-14, 13-14 ATS)

College Basketball Odds:
Akron Zips -4.5
Western Michigan Broncos +4.5
Game Total 134

In spite of the fact that EMU's F Carlos Medlock scored 42 points, the Zips hit the ridiculous backdoor in this college basketball betting battle on Thursday afternoon behind a 16-8 second overtime. Five different scorers reached double digits for Akron, led by G Steve McNees' 18.

Akron shot a whopping 57.9 percent from downtown, but only 63.2 percent from the free throw line in the victory. The former was rather uncharacteristic for the Zips, as they only came into the game shooting 33.1 percent from beyond the arc on the season.

The latter shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as Akron only shoots 65.5 percent from the charity stripe, which is a number that absolutely must improve for the team's season to continue.

G David Kool played 39 of a possible 40 minutes against the Chippewas on Thursday afternoon, and he was needed every single step of the way. Kool, the team's leading scorer at 21.1 points per game, dropped 26 on Central Michigan on 7/15 shooting and 12/14 from the free throw line.

It was also a great game for F Flenard Whitfield off of the bench, who put up a double-double with 12 points and 12 rebounds. He led the team's rebounding effort at +9 for the game.

That's a rebounding edge that WMU isn't always used to. The team only earned a +2.7 rebounding margin per game during the regular season.

The team doesn't really excel either offensively or defensively, as it is scoring 69.5 points per game against 66.5 allowed.

College Basketball Insider Betting Tip: Akron has owned this series of late, going 7-1 SU and ATS in its L/8 college basketball battles with the Broncos.

Even though Akron played a marathon of a betting affair yesterday, its depth should be able to rule the day against a Western Michigan team that will be in a boat load of trouble if it doesn't get production from its top scorer.

As long as the Zips don't ultimately shoot themselves in the foot from the foul line, they should be able to take care of a bunch of Broncos that only finished at .500 in a bad conference this season.

Back Akron to come back with a much more inspired effort and march on to Saturday's championship game.