Minnesota-Indiana Line

Ordinarily the scrutiny associated with being the nation’s number one team, particularly this late in the season, ensures it’s extremely difficult to find value where that team is concerned. But not today.

With Indiana taking their highly impressive, best offense in the country, and at least three NBA bound products into a slumping Minnesota today, I had every reason to suggest the line would be around the double figure mark. That it’s just 5 is surely worthy of notice.

I wonder once again whether this line is being influenced too greatly by the home court factor, an issue I’ve noted in a few of the lines I’ve posted recently.

There’s an argument that Indiana along with being the best overall team are also the best road team in the country, having lost just once all season away from Bloomington while recently chalking up victories on the road to both Ohio State and Michigan State.

This line also might be looking too much at Indiana’s match a month ago with Minnesota when they won by just 7. Perhaps forgotten however is that the Hoosiers had a 23 point half time lead that day with the overall margin in no way reflecting what truly is a sizeable gap between these two.

It’s amazing to think that in Mid-January this Minnesota outfit was 15-1 and ranked in the nation’s top 10. Starting with that loss to Indiana they’ve since gone 3-8 and have failed to score more than 52 in 8 of their past 9 matches. Their chances of a tournament bid are slumping rapidly and won’t be assisted by their last two losses being in excess of 20 points.

Indiana has covered their handicap in 6 of the last 7 games they’ve played. I’d expect them to cover again today.