Denver has always benefited from it's huge home court advantage vs Sun Belt opponents due to the lengthy travel and altitude associated with playing there. But playing away from Magness Arena was an entirely different story for the Pioneers....until this year. Denver is 6-2 away from home this year--with the six wins equaling as many wins away from home that they've had in the previous five seasons combined. This includes conference road wins already at Arkansas St (by 3), South Alabama (by 17), and LA-Monroe (by 15). Not to mention an impressive road win at Utah St by 13 earlier in the year.
Denver runs a slow pace at which Joe Scott wants his teams to run his Princeton style offense at. In the previous 4 years, Denver has finished every season in the bottom 5 nationally with respect to tempo, never averaging more than 59.7 possessions. Denver has "sped" things up a little bit more this season, averaging 61.0 possessions per game (#336). In the four games that they played opponents this year with tempo's ranked in top 100, they exceeded 69 pts each time and went 3-1 (only loss was by 2 in OT to Iona). Maximizing the additional possessions with their highly efficient offense, Denver scored 69 pts on 66 possessions vs Portland St (#86), 78 pts on 74 possessions vs Iona (#18), 79 pts on 66 possessions vs Troy (#46), and 78 pts on 60 possessions vs W Ky (#89). Today they will go against a N Texas team who will be the second fastest they've yet to face this year who rank 38th nationally with respect to adjusted tempo.
The number one reason we LOVE Denver today though is, Denver is catching a N Texas team who will be playing their first game since the announcement was made that Chris Jones and Jordan Williams will miss the remainder of the season due to academics earlier in the week. It cannot be stressed enough how big of a blow this will be to the Mean Green today. Jones was the team leader in points, assists, and steals. Williams was third on the team in points. The combined 25 points the two contributed equaled 37% of the team's total offense per game. Denver will be focused today as well based on the fact that Denver was embarrassed by 22 points in last year's trip to Denton and scored a season low 41 points. As a result, we can see this game quickly becoming lopsided due to Denver's highly efficient offense benefiting from the extra possessions it will get going vs an undermanned N Texas team
NCAA Basketball Free Pick - Denver -3

 

If you look into UABS season though they have played the 28th hardest schedule, here are their losses... Creighton 17-2, Murray State 19-0, Wichita State 16-3, So. Miss 16-3, Marshall 13-5, Memphis 12-6, Florida 14-4, VCU 14-5, Kent State 12-5,South Alabama 10-7. That's a combined record of 143-40!!!!!!!

Meanwhile, Central Florida comes in with a soft 14-4 record and has a letdown spot squeaking out a one point win at home over Memphis for their first win ever against Memphis. CFla has played 4 true road games this year. They were crushed by Florida State 73-50. They lost at Louisiana Lafayette 61-60, they lost at Marshall 65-64 and they had an easy win at East Carolina 81-62.

UAB ranks 80th in Defensive Efficiency against a much tougher schedule than CFla and CFla ranks 109th.

CFla is a bad 3 point shooting team and a horrible free throw shooting team. They come in overrated against an underrated and hungry UAB team and CFla comes into a very flat situation off an extremely emotional win. UAB comes in 1-4 in its last 5 games with all 4 losses against top 71 teams.