St. Mary’s vs BYU Pick – Basketball Predictions & Odds 2/18/23

The BYU Cougars and the Saint Mary’s Gaels meet Saturday in college basketball action from McKeon Pavilion. BYU is coming off a Thursday game versus Santa Clara. In that matchup the Cougars fell by seven points. As for Saint Mary’s, they played San Diego in their Thursday matchup. The Gaels would go on to power out a three-point win. Check back all season long for free college basketball picks at Sports Chat Place.

BYU Cougars

BYU managed a reasonable 14-8 run over their first 22 games of the season. The Cougars would follow that up with a sketchy 2-4 stretch with wins over only LMU and Pacific. The losses came to San Francisco, Saint Mary’s, Pepperdine and Gonzaga otherwise. 

In the Santa Clara game on Thursday, the Cougars were drilled 47-30 in the first half. BYU got better from there on 44 second-half points but still lost 81-74. Rudi Williams scored 20 points and Fousseyni Traore doubled on 13 points and 10 rebounds.

Saint Mary’s Gaels 

Over on the Saint Mary’s side, they managed to go 16-4 over their first 20 outings this year. The Gaels would win six of the next seven games, taking out Pepperdine, Santa Clara, BYU, San Francisco, Gonzaga and Portland with a lone loss to LMU. 

Matched up against San Diego on Thursday, the Gaels were up 39-20 in the locker room. Things got interesting in the second half but Saint Mary’s eventually pulled off the win 62-59. Mitchell Saxen doubled up on 17 points and 10 rebounds in the victory. 

ANDREW’S FREE PICK 

I’m going to stay with Saint Mary’s. The Gaels are playing well these days; they’ve won 14 of their last 15 games and generally score pretty well. Saint Mary’s last saw BYU back on January 28 in a tense 57-56 road victory at Marriott Center. BYU has gone just 2-3 since then but they’ve scored 74 or more points in all five of those games. This one’s probably going to be another relatively low-scoring matchup and it should be quite interesting. Ultimately I like Saint Mary’s better cover-wise.