Bet on Villanova as slight underdogs against Marquette in Big East tournament matchup

Villanova avoided disaster on Wednesday night, with Justin Moore drilling a 3-pointer with 11 seconds left to beat lowly DePaul by one point.

The Wildcats are too inconsistent offensively. They’re so reliant on perimeter shots that they can lose to anyone when shots don’t fall.

The biggest question surrounding this matchup is the status of superstar All-American point guard Tyler Kolek. Can the Golden Eagles effectively create offense without him?

(9:30 p.m. ET, Fox Sports 1)

The Eagles roasted the Wildcats in both regular-season meetings, dropping over 80 points while generating well over 1.00 PPP in pick-and-roll sets.

However, a massive reason for that was Kolek, who scored a combined 53 points while adding 20 assists to only four turnovers.

Shaka Smart runs an innovative, explosive ball-screen offense, with Kolek’s vision, Oso Ighadaro’s vision, and Kam Jones’ sharpshooting unpacking defenses inside out.

But can they do the same without Kolek? The Eagles are 1-2 since he went down, putting together a poverty ball-screen performance against the Huskies.

Meanwhile, Villanova generated some highly efficient offense.

Marquette plays aggressive perimeter defense, ranking second in the Big East in defensive turnover rate. However, the Eagles tend to overrun shooters, ranking ninth in the Big East in 3-point rate and Open 3-point Rate allowed.

And they have a slightly leaky rim defense, especially against post-up sets, where the Eagles rank eighth among Big East teams in PPP allowed.

That’s a bad matchup against Villanova, a very steady ball-handling (first in Big East in turnover rate) perimeter-oriented offense that loves to fire the rock (13th nationally in 3-point rate).

So, across the two head-to-head matchups, Villanova posted a 28-to-19 assist-to-turnover ratio while shooting 26-for-54 (48%) from 3. The Wildcats were a bit shakier in generating interior offense. However, they still got Eric Dixon low-block buckets, scoring 20 points on 17 post-up sets, which was suitable for a relatively efficient 1.18 PPP.

I feel good about Villanova’s ability to run its offense, but I question whether Marquette can run its.

Everyone is running to bet on Marquette after the Wildcats’ pathetic performance against the Blue Demons, so the Eagles are getting steamed in the markets. The Action Network App has tracked 72% of spread bets on Marquette.

But I’ll bet against the public and the steam, as I think Villanova can compete with the Kolek-less Eagles.

Projections agree, with the ShotQualityBets and EvanMiya models projecting this game closer to a pick ‘em.

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