Duke vs Kentucky College Basketball Picks, Odds, Predictions 11/9/2021

The Kentucky Wildcats and the Duke Blue Devils meet in college basketball action from Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night.

The Kentucky Wildcats will look to forget about 2020-21, a disappointing 9-16 record including 8-9 in conference play, their worst season since 1988-89, the worst winning percentage in a season since 1926-27 and the worst season that John Calipari had since 1989 when he was coaching his first season at UMass. The Wildcats parted ways with BJ Boston and Isaiah Jackson who both went pro as well as Devin Askew who transferred and Olivier Sarr who graduated, but there are a lot of transfers coming in to restock the cabinets. Kellan Grady transfers in from Davidson after logging 17.1 PPG and 4.6 RPG last year while Sahvir Wheeler comes from within the SEC as the former Georgia Bulldog had 14 points and 7.4 assists per game last year. Oscar Tshiebwe might be the prize pickup, after logging 8.5 PPG and 7.8 RPG for West Virginia last season, as well as CJ Fredrick who had 7.5 PPG for Iowa last year. And all of that is without the guys coming back like Kelon Brooks who had 10.3 PPG and 6.8 RPG last year, Davion Mintz who had 11.5 PPG and incoming star freshman TyTy Washington. The pieces are there for Coach Cal to bring Kentucky back to prominence, but it wouldn’t take much after last season.

The Duke Blue Devils also had a miserable 2020-21 by their own standards, finishing 13-11 and 9-9 in ACC conference play to finish in 10^th. The Blue Devils had a chance to make noise in the ACC tournament, but a positive COVID test bounced them from the conference tourney and effectively ended their season, missing the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995. Coach K’s farewell season brings in plenty of optimism with three 5-star recruits coming to Durham, led by 6’11 big man Paolo Banchero, AJ Griffin at one guard spot and Trevor Keels as a likely 6^th man. Theo John comes in from Marquette after logging 8 PPG and 5 RPG for the Golden Eagles last season, while the likes of Wendell Moore and Jeremy Roach were retained by the Blue Devils for the upcoming season after Moore had 9.7 PPG and 4.8 RPG last year and Roach chipped in 8.7 PPG last year. Only time will tell if the likes of Banchero, Moore and co. can get Duke back to the tournament and back to the level they were at before all of these crazy times happened a year and a half ago.

Kentucky is 1-4 ATS in their last 5 neutral site games and 1-5 ATS in their last 6 neutral site games as an underdog while the over is 7-2-1 in their last 10 games overall. Duke is 4-1 ATS in their last 5 neutral site games and 5-1 ATS in their last 6 games as a favorite while the over is 34-16-1 in their last 51 games overall.

This matchup features two teams looking to rebound from poor seasons last year, and a win over the other would be a nice start in the right direction. Duke did well to bring in Paolo Banchero who could end up being the #1 overall pick in this year’s draft. The thing here is that on opening night there can be a lot of jitters and it’s Kentucky that brings in a lot of experienced talent via the transfer portal and in games like these, that is the intangible edge that we need. Give me Kentucky here.