Texas vs UTEP 11/7/22 College Basketball Picks, Predictions, Odds

The UTEP Miners and the Texas Longhorns meet in college basketball action from the Frank Erwin Special Events Center on Monday night.

The UTEP Miners will look to build on a decent 2021-22 campaign, finishing the year at 20-14 overall, including an 11-7 mark in C-USA conference play. The Miners would upend Old Dominion in the second round of the conference tournament, before being taken down by Middle Tennessee in the quarterfinals. UTEP got an invite to the inaugural TBC tournament, beating Western Illinois before falling to Southern Utah in the second round, ending their season. There will be a lot of turnover for UTEP this season, losing their three top players from last year’s squad in Souley Boum (19.8 PPG, 4.5 RPG), Keonte Kennedy (14.1 PPG, 6.1 RPG) and Jamal Bieniemy (14.7 PPG, 4 APG) but the Miners hit the transfer portal hard and got some solid returns, including a pair of double-digit scorers in Shamar Givance (13.7 PPG, 4.1 RPG, 3.9 APG for Evansville in 2021-22) and Tae Hardy (13.7 PPG for Southern Miss) as well as Calvin Solomon from Stephen F. Austin (9.3 PPG, 5.8 RPG).

The Texas Longhorns will look to take steps forward in 2022-23, finishing 2021-22 with a record of 22-12, including a 10-8 mark in Big 12 conference play in Chris Beard’s first year in charge in Austin. The Longhorns got the #4 seed in the Big 12 tournament, but their stay was short-lived as TCU bounced the Longhorns in the quarterfinals. Texas did earn a berth in the NCAA tournament as an at-large bid, taking out Virginia Tech in the first round before losing to Purdue, ending their season. The Longhorns lose a fair bit of depth with six players from last year’s team now gone, including Andrew Jones (11.2 PPG), but key pieces return like Marcus Carr (11.4 PPG, 3.4 APG) and Timmy Allen (12.1 PPG, 6.4 RPG). Texas also brought in some decent transfers as well, with Tyrese Hunter (11 PPG, 4.9 APG) coming from Iowa State and Sir’Jabari Rice (11.9 PPG) coming from New Mexico State. The Longhorns also have a pair of solid five-star freshmen coming in the form of Dillon Mitchell and Arterio Morris, so this Longhorns group may be the team to keep an eye on to make a move in the Big 12 this season.

The under is 5-2 in UTEP’s last 7 road games. Texas is 1-4 ATS in their last 5 home games and 1-7 ATS in their last 8 games overall while the under is 15-7 in their last 22 home games.

I’ll give credit to UTEP for going out and getting a few quality players to reload and try to build going forward in 2022. On the other side, Texas still has. A lot of depth and are going to be a team to keep an eye on in the Big 12 and I get why they’re favored by this many points. That being said, I like the under in this game as I think Texas tries to instill their defensive style on UTEP and for this to be a bit of a defensive struggle. Give me the under.