Arizona State vs Portland College Basketball Picks, Odds, Predictions 11/9/2021

The Portland Pilots and the Arizona State Sun Devils meet in college basketball action from the Desert Financial Arena on Tuesday night.

The Portland Pilots will look to shake off a terrible 2020-21 season, finishing at 6-15 overall including a paltry 0-11 in WCC conference play, losing to Santa Clara in the first round of the WCC tournament. The Pilots are basically starting from scratch with all of their top players from last year gone. The Pilots do bring in Mike Meadows (10.5 PPG, 2.5 APG) and Tyler Robertson (11.1 PPG, 3.6 RPG, 3 APG) from Eastern Washington as well as Chris Austin (11.4 PPG) from Fordham and Moses Wood (6.1 PPG, 4.2 RPG) from UNLV for the upcoming season. The Pilots likely finish in the basement of the WCC once again, based on a 1-42 conference record in the last three seasons, it’s hard to envision any other finish for the Pilots.

The Arizona State Sun Devils will look to move past a disastrous 2020-21 season, where a talent-laden top recruiting class with an experienced backcourt went 11-14 including 7-10 in Pac-12 conference play, finishing with the #8 seed in the conference tournament. The Sun Devils took out Washington State before losing to top-seeded Oregon in the quarterfinals. Familiar faces like Remy Martin, Alonzo Verge, Josh Christopher Taeshon Cherry and Holland Woods are all departed, making way for the likes of Marreon Jackson (18.1 PPG, 6.1 RPG, 5.9 APG) from Toledo, Jay Heath (14.5 PPG, 3.1 RPG) from Boston College, DJ Horne (15.1 PPG, 3.7 RPG, 2.7 APG) from Illinois State and Luther Muhammad (7 PPG, 2.3 RPG in 2019-20) from Ohio State. Marcus Bagley is back for Bobby Hurley’s crew after pitching in 10.8 PPG and 6.2 RPG last season as is Kimani Lawrence and Jalen Graham, both of whom had 8.1 PPG and 5 RPG for the Sun Devils last season. Once again, the talent is there for ASU, but it’s a matter of will they or won’t they for the Sun Devils in 2021-22.

Portland is 1-9 ATS in their last 10 games as an underdog and 1-6 ATS in their last 7 road games while the over is 5-0 in their last 5 games overall. Arizona State is 16-34-1 ATS in their last 51 games overall and 4-14 ATS in their last 18 home games while the over is 12-5 in their last 17 games as a home favorite.

Yeesh. Talk about a pair of teams that struggled last season, so badly that I don’t really want to back either one. With that said, Arizona State has the better talent coming into the season, and while it will take time to gel, the same can be said for Portland who are basically starting over. At least Bobby Hurley has something to build off of. I’ll lay the points with Arizona State if forced to pick.