College Basketball Odds, Pick for UConn vs Marquette

UConn vs Marquette is on Wednesday, March 6 at 8:30 p.m. ET on FS1. Here's college basketball odds and a pick for UConn vs Marquette.

In the lead up to the college basketball season, the Marquette Golden Eagles looked to take center stage for the stretch run of the Big East's chase for a championship. Consecutive games against fellow contenders Creighton and UConn in the final weeks of the regular season seemed to be the perfect matchups to sort out the top of the standings in the conference.

Unfortunately for fans of the Big East, that hasn't quite the been the case.

The Connecticut Huskies essentially locked up the conference crown prior to this stretch of games, leaving Marquette's marquee matchups falling a little flat.

Those games fell even flatter when Marquette's roster took a hit on the injury report. An hour prior to tip-off with Creighton, the Golden Eagles scratched Tyler Kolek and Oso Ighodaro from the lineup, arguably the team's two best players.

Ighodaro is likely to return, — he missed that game due to an illness that kept him at the team hotel — while Kolek has been ruled out for the rest of the regular season with a nagging oblique injury.

With the Big East title decided, it may prove a smart play to sit Kolek. The difference in seeding in the Big East tournament will be negligible or nothing, and the NCAA tournament committee should factor his absence into their seeding of the Golden Eagles.

Instead of a battle of the Big East's best teams, fans will need to settle for Marquette trying to pull an upset on Senior Night without its All-American on the floor.

You may start hearing people call this UConn team the strongest reigning champion in college basketball since Florida repeated as champs early this century.

I think that obscures some of the recent success of post-title teams, like the 2019 North Carolina, 2022 Baylor and 2023 Kansas teams that all earned No. 1 seeds in March with the crown sitting atop their heads.

The more valid — and possibly outlandish — claim I'll make about UConn? These Huskies are better than the team that won the national title last season. That offers no guarantees of March success — single elimination play is a fickle beast — yet it speaks to the work of Danny Hurley, his players and staff.

If Purdue's Zach Edey didn't exist, UConn's 7-foot monster Donovan Clingan would surely attract far more headlines as the most dominant big man in recent years.

He's aided by a perimeter attack, rife with shooters. Help on Clingan, and he'll kick to a teammate for a scoring chance. Run at that shooter too aggressively and many of them will knife past your close out to attack the rim or create for others.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

There's a recipe to beating these Huskies. Two of the three teams to have done so made more than half their 3-point attempts.

When UConn has the ball, you need an answer for Clingan to make the Huskies play outside first, rather than using his size to open up space on the perimeter.

Lastly, on the offensive end, you need a handful playmakers, able to test all five Huskies' defensive abilities. Any team with one primary creator and scorer plays into UConn's hands.

Watching Marquette tackle Creighton — on the road without Kolek or Ighodaro — felt like a glimpse into an alternate universe. That zombie-fied version of the Golden Eagles put up a better fight than you'd expect, trailing by just three points with 10 minutes on the second half clock.

If anything, Creighton was confused. They game-planned for a matchup that included Marquette's stars and had really no idea what to expect Marquette to do without its most vital pieces.

Eventually, Creighton settled in and ran away from the short-handed Eagles, hitting 13 3s in the process.

Without Ighodaro, Shaka Smart turned to sophomore Ben Gold. He set career highs for minutes (37, after never clearing 26 minutes in a game before), field goal attempts and 3s attempted — though he hit just 1-of-8 from deep.

Ighodaro's return should mean less of Gold, but Kolek's absence still leaves gaping holes in the offensive game plan. Kolek leads the Big East in assist rate, acting as the Steve Nash in an offense that allows him tons of leeway to create off the dribble.

That void was partially filled by Kam Jones, who played every second of the game at Creighton. He found his own scoring chances, yet doesn't have Kolek's playmaking ability. Marquette only totaled seven assists as a team Saturday, matching a season low.

My expectation would be to see more of Ighodaro as the offensive initiator against UConn. He's a crafty ball-handler and passer, with the extra space to operate expected as the slower-footed Clingan follows him to the perimeter.

It would take some magic for Marquette to beat UConn without its star point guard.

On the Golden Eagles' home court — with Senior Night festivities — maybe they drum up the magic to make that happen.

Even if Marquette is able to compete in this game, I'd expect the Golden Eagles to do so by playing slower and making things uglier than they typically do.

With Kolek as the catalyst, Marquette has averaged the quickest offensive possessions in the Big East. With his teammates handling the ball instead, Marquette should slow down a touch.

In a worst case scenario, it's hard to see Marquette finding a way to score without Kolek. UConn will have studied Saturday's game film and will make life tough for Jones.

Pick: Under 151