The Little Rock Trojans and the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers meet Thursday in college basketball action from HTC Center. Little Rock is sitting at 7-9 so far this year and coming off a triple-overtime win over UT Arlington. As for Coastal Carolina, they’re currently 11-8 on the season. The Chanticleers beat Georgia State in OT during their last outing. Check back all season long for free college basketball picks at Sports Chat Place.
Little Rock managed a 5-6 run over their first 11 games, beating Southern Illinois, Champion Christian, Arkansas Baptist, Northern Illinois and Philander Smith. It’s been a spotty 2-3 run since then with wins over only Georgia Southern and UT Arlington.
Matched up against the Mavericks on Saturday, the Trojans posted a 35-26 first half but fell behind from there and needed three overtime periods to take the 98-96 win. DJ Smith had a great outing with 27 points, four rebounds and two assists in the victory.
Over on the Coastal Carolina side, they hit a 7-3 run in their first 10 games with losses to UNC Wilmington, Toledo and Mercer. The Chanticleers have gone 4-5 in the nine outings since, beating UL Monroe, Emory & Henry, Georgia Southern and Georgia State.
In Saturday’s Georgia State matchup, the Chanticleers were down by four points at halftime but surged from there to force OT. When the buzzer sounded Coastal had a 72-68 win. Tops in scoring was Vince Cole with 23 points and six rebounds.
The Chanticleers are 7-20 ATS in their last 27 after an ATS win and 5-2 ATS in their last seven Thursday games. The under is 21-9 in Coastal’s last 30 Thursday games.
Meanwhile, the Trojans are 8-20-1 ATS in their last 29 road games and 0-7 ATS in their last seven after an ATS win. The over is 4-1 in Little Rock’s last five overall.
PICK: I’m probably sticking with Coastal Carolina here. The Chanticleers have certainly been spotty lately, but in comparable matchups they’re still playing fairly well. Coastal has hit 69 or more points in eight of their last 11 games and they’ve been competitive in most of their losses during that time.
As for Little Rock, they’ve only been able to play five games since December 11 and the results have been mixed. I like the Trojans to post a quality outing here, though; it should be a pretty solid matchup.