The Indiana State Sycamores and the Drake Bulldogs meet in college basketball action from the Knapp Center on Monday night.
The Indiana State Sycamores will look to rebound from back-to-back losses after a 76-72 loss to Southern Illinois last time out. Cooper Neese leads the Sycamores in scoring with 16.5 PPG along with 4.4 RPG while Cameron Henry has 14.5 PPG with a team-high 6 RPG and 2.8 APG. Micah Thomas has 10.7 PPG to cap off the trio of double-digit scorers for Indiana State while Xavier Bledson has 9.9 PPG with a team-high 4 APG and Kailex Stephens has 9.2 PPG with 5.6 RPG as well on the year. As a team, Indiana State is averaging 71.3 PPG on 44.4% shooting from the field, 33.3% from three and 77.5% from the foul line while allowing 71.3 PPG on 43% shooting from the field and 35.3% from three this season.
The Drake Bulldogs will look to build on back-to-back wins after an 83-76 win over Loyola-Chicago last time out. Tucker Devries leads the Bulldogs in scoring with 14.1 PPG along with 4.7 RPG while Garrett Sturtz has 11.1 PPG with a team-high 7.5 RPG and Roman Penn has 10.3 PPG with 3.6 APG this season. D.J. Wilkins has 10.1 PPG as well to finish off the group of double-digit scorers for Drake so far this season while ShanQuan Hemphill has 9.8 PPG with 5.2 RPG. As a team, Drake is averaging 74.6 PPG on 45.6% shooting from the field, 35.2% from three and 74.8% from the foul line while allowing 66.9 PPG on 43% shooting from the field and 33.4% from three this season.
Indiana State is 0-5 ATS in their last 5 games following a loss and 1-4 ATS in their last 5 games following an ATS loss while the under is 14-3 in their last 17 Monday games. Drake is 4-1 ATS in their last 5 Monday games and 8-21-1 ATS in their last 30 games overall while the overis 12-3 in their last 15 games following an ATS win.
I get the case to be made both ways here, but I’m still leading towards the over in this one. Defense has been a bit of an issue for the Sycamores against the better MVC teams this season, but Drake’s allowed teams to hang around at times in conference play and I just think that this is a game that’s going to end up being a lot higher-scoring than one would think between these two, like the first meeting that had 152 combined points. Give me the over in this one.