NCAAB Odds, Pick for Georgetown vs Villanova: Big East Guide

Georgetown plays Villanova on Tuesday, February 27 at 6:30 p.m. ET on FS1. Here's NCAAB odds and a pick for Georgetown vs. Villanova.

Among the tapestry of college basketball's storied rivalries, the Villanova Wildcats and Georgetown Hoyas stand tall, producing some of the greatest games the sport has ever seen.

Yet, that will not be the case Tuesday night when the Hoyas head up the Northeast Corridor to battle Villanova. Neither of these teams is projected to make the NCAA Tournament, which happened last year for the first time since 2004.

Villanova's bubble chances are still alive, and Georgetown will be playing for rivalry bragging rights, though few expect the Hoyas to steal a road win.

The rebuild at Georgetown is still a long way from finding success. The Hoyas have just two conference wins this season, matching their combined total in Patrick Ewing's final two seasons.

This year, however, both wins came over DePaul, which may go down as the worst power conference team of the 21st century. Georgetown has just one win over a team ranked 150th or better by KenPom after having two such wins in each of the last two seasons.

That rightfully paints a dark picture for a Georgetown team doing its best to climb out of rock bottom and back toward some semblance of what was once one of America's premier blue-blood programs.

Changing coaches during the NIL and transfer portal era was always going to deplete the talent on campus in the short term, with the hopes of recruiting wins in the long term.

The issue right now is that beyond the talent on the court, this team is sloppy, out of position and seemingly lost too often. Georgetown ranks last in the Big East in 2-point percentage, assist rate, field goal percentage and 2-point percentage allowed. Remove disastrous DePaul, and that list multiplies, including offensive and defensive efficiency.

The only silver lining for this season has been the play of Jayden Epps, a sophomore transfer from Illinois who's averaging 18.1 points per game. He's not doing it efficiently — he's shooting 36% on 15.2 field goal attempts per game — but Epps is a piece to build on if Cooley can keep him out of the portal this offseason.

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After Villanova lost to UConn on Saturday, Connecticut head coach Danny Hurley was quick to jump to the aid of his conference rival, touting the Wildcats as a tournament-worthy team.

Hurley rattled off many of Villanova's strong wins but seemed to ignore both how many losses Villanova has and how bad a few of those defeats will look come tourney time.

Villanova was swept in Philadelphia's Big 5 series, losing to Penn, St. Joe's and Drexel. The Wildcats are also just 8-8 in conference, including a five-game skid earlier this season. Using the NCAA's NET metric and quadrant system, Nova is just 3-8 in Quad 1 games, and more concerningly, 6-3 against the bottom two quadrants.

The problems for the Cats come mostly on the offensive end, where embattled second-year head coach Kyle Neptune's scheme and philosophies simply don't fit the roster he's built.

Villanova ranks in the top 20 nationally in 3-point rate while shooting the 220th-best percentage from deep.

Neptune's guys keep firing from long range, maybe hoping that the law of averages will come to pass. But without the spacing or offensive flow to find the right looks, the jumpers have continued to miss the mark.

Remove sharpshooter Brendan Hausen — who leads Villanova in 3-point attempts, makes and percentage — and the Wildcats shoot just 31% from long range. That would rank outside the top 300 nationally, but the non-Hausen Wildcats still attempt nearly 25 combined long-range jumpers each game.

There's a world where Villanova can get hot and stop having the long scoreless droughts that are driven largely by shot selection issues, yet the window for such a run gets smaller and smaller as Villanova's regular-season and postseason hopes slip away.

The last time these two teams met, Villanova smothered Georgetown, holding the Hoyas to just 54 points in an easy win. This time around, it's hard to see the scoring staying so low.

That game between the Hoyas and Cats was the only one of Georgetown's last 12 (!) outings to stay under 140 total points. In that span, the Hoyas and their opponents have averaged 155 combined points, a trend I see continuing.

Villanova is coming off a deflating loss to UConn in which the Wildcats made just three of their 24 attempts from deep.

Georgetown will certainly allow Villanova to find shots from all over, forcing the Hoyas to chase their tails to keep up.

Pick: Over 140.5 (Play to 143)