The Pacific Tigers and the San Diego Toreros meet Thursday in college basketball action from Jenny Craig Pavilion. Pacific is currently 8-9 on the year. The Tigers beat LMU in their last outing. As for San Diego, they’re sitting at 8-8 following a win over San Francisco. Check back all season long for free college basketball picks at Sports Chat Place.
Pacific went just 3-7 over their first 10 games, beating only North Dakota State, North Dakota and UC Davis. The Tigers are 5-2 since then with wins over Fresno State, Stan State, San Jose State, Lamar and LMU.
Matched up against LMU on Saturday, Pacific went into the break up 34-29. The Tigers scored another 44 points from there in a 78-72 win. Nicquel Blake managed 23 points, and Jordan Ivy-Curry put up 11 points.
Over on the San Diego side, they were 5-5 after 10 games with wins over Sonoma State, FGCU, NJIT, SDCC and Longwood. The Toreros have gone 3-3 since then with wins over UC San Diego, UC Riverside and San Francisco.
In the San Francisco game on Saturday, the Toreros took a 34-32 deficit into the second half. San Diego posted a 48-34 run from there and won it 80-68. Marcellus Earlington put up 23 points and Jase Townsend added 22 points with six rebounds.
PICK: I’ll probably stick with San Diego. You could make a good case either way in this one, though; it should be a good matchup. In any case, San Diego is just 2-3 over their last five games but they’re scoring pretty well overall. Trouble is, the Toreros are also giving up quite a few points: 68 or more in each of their last five outings. Pacific has been a mixed bag on the scoreboard lately but they should post a solid total in this one. I like it to be high-scoring and competitive the whole way.