Auburn vs George Mason 11/7/22 College Basketball Picks, Predictions, Odds

The George Mason Patriots and the Auburn Tigers meet in a college basketball matchup from the Auburn Arena on Monday.

The George Mason Patriots will look to bounce back from a frustrating 2021-22 campaign that saw George Mason finish at 14-16 overall including 7-9 in A-10 conference play to end up in 9^th place. The Patriots ultimately would see their season end with a loss to Fordham in the A-10 conference tournament. The Patriots do lose D’Shawn Schwartz from last year’s group but do bring back three double-digit scorers in leading scorer Josh Oduro (17.7 PPG, 7.5 RPG), DeVon Cooper (11.6 PPG) and Davonte Gaines (10.2 PPG, team-high 8.1 RPG) with Cooper and Gaines both shooting better than 40% from 3-point range last season. Victor Bailey was also brought in from Tennessee as a nice transfer portal get with coach Kim English having ties to Bailey from his time as an assistant at Tennessee.

The Auburn Tigers will look to build on a fairly successful 2021-22 campaign, where the Tigers finished with a 28-6 record, including a 15-3 mark in SEC conference play to win the SEC regular season title. The #1 seed in the SEC tournament didn’t last long though, as Auburn was upended in the quarterfinals by Texas A&M. The Tigers made the Big Dance as a 2-seed, defeating Jacksonville State before being taken down by Miami in the second round. Auburn does lose a couple of key pieces, like Jabari Smith who went #3 overall in the NBA draft after putting up 16.9 PPG and 7.4 RPG as well as Walker Kessler who had 11.4 PPG, 8.1 RPG and 4.6 blocks per game last year. Auburn does get back a pair of double-digit scorers though in Wendell Green Jr. (12 PPG, team-high 5.1 APG) and K.D. Johnson (12.3 PPG), but the big get might be Johni Broome as a transfer from Morehead State as Broome was a double-double machine for the Eagles last year, logging 16.8 PPG and 10.5 RPG as well as 3.9 BPG for Morehead State last year.

George Mason is 0-3-1 ATS in their last 4 road games and 7-20-2 ATS in their last 29 Monday games while the over is 31-14 in their last 45 road games. Auburn is 2-7 ATS in their last 9 games overall and 1-5 ATS in their last 6 home games while the under is 6-2 in their last 8 Monday games.

I get why Auburn’s favored here, but there’s a lot of turnover for the Tigers coming into this season and while there are some solid pieces coming in, it’s still a lot to give up to a George Mason team that’s capable of taking on some of the best out there and gave teams like Maryland a run last year. I don’t know if it’ll be sustainable long term for George Mason, but there’s some value here with the points.