Tiny Nick’s Gambling Picks: 12/13

Locks

NBA (0.5 Unit) Golden State Warriors/Milwaukee Bucks Under 233.5 (-110): 6:30 PM CT on TNT

This is just too high of a total for a game where I expect Milwaukee to be setting the pace. That means a slower and more defensive-oriented affair, which has been typical of Bucks games this year. They’ve been excellent on defense to start the season, owning the top defensive rating in the league, but haven’t been great on offense.

With Milwaukee just 17th in scoring and 23rd in shooting, they’ll want to dictate style here and avoid a track meet with the Golden State offense. While Golden State's offense is right near the top of just about every statistical category, they don’t tend to get into this high-scoring of games against top defensive squads. And their own defense has started to improve after a horrific start to the season.

That’s led to them actually going 11-6 under this total since they started turning their season around. Meanwhile, Milwaukee hardly ever plays to this high of a number, going 21-5 under this particular total on the year. With injury concerns for some top players from both teams, I’m just not seeing enough scoring to get to this high of a total.

NCAA Basketball (1 Unit) NC A&T @ Houston -16 First Half (-110): 7:00 PM CT on ESPN+

I would not want to be a Houston player at Kelvin Sampson’s practices the past couple of days after they blew a 15-point lead to Alabama on Saturday. And, consequently, I would not want to be North Carolina A&T having to face the Cougars tonight. So I’m going back to the first-half well with Houston in this one, which strikes me as a bit of lazy odds-making.

Just cutting the full-game spread in half here doesn’t do enough to account for the Cougars being the best first-half team in the country. Houston has the top first-half average margin at plus-17.1 points, which is built on them allowing the fewest points before halftime in the country.

That should continue tonight for a motivated squad against an Aggies team that’s simply outmatched. A team reliant on pace and three-point shooting will get shut down by a Houston defense that’s third-best at defending the perimeter. We also have precedent to look at with A&T here in their only other power-school matchups, as they trailed Iowa at the half by 20 and Iowa State by 23 early in the year. This one should get out of hand early, so keep backing the Houston first-half juggernaut.

Degenerates

No degenerates today.

Tiny Nick is 978-817 ATS (+89.8 Units) on his Locks since joining Zone Coverage. 

Every day he will offer his Locks and Degenerate picks. Locks are the games he’s confident in. Degenerates are entertaining but riskier picks.