Yale vs. Cornell prediction: Odds, picks, best bet for Ivy League semifinals
The Ivy League Tournament gets underway on Saturday with No.1 Yale taking on No.
4 Cornell at Newman Arena in Ithaca, N.Y.Yale won the regular season with an 11-3 record, and they’ll nominally be the “home team” on Saturday, but this game and tournament are being hosted by Cornell, which throws a bit of a wrench into things.Still, the bookmakers have established the Bulldogs as 3.5-point favorites for Saturday morning’s tilt in Upstate New York.It’s plain to see why Yale is the odds-on favorite to win the Ivy League Tournament.Not only did the Bulldogs boast the best record in the conference, but they had the best overall mark at an impressive 23-5.
Yale is also the only team that sits inside the top-100 in KenPom’s power rankings.The Bulldogs enter the tournament as the 81st-best team this season, per KenPom, putting them well ahead of the field: Harvard (151), Cornell (158), and Penn (164).While Yale is a two-way team that thrives on elite three-point shooting, Cornell is a mercurial unit.The Big Red led the Ivy League in scoring (88.9 points per game), but they finished last in defense, conceding just over 83 points per contest.The latter is a huge red flag against Yale, which finished second in scoring, but balanced that out with the third-best defense.The key to the Bulldogs’ success is depth, and the team’s collective ability to score from beyond the arc.
Yale finished third in all of college basketball in 3-point percentage (40 percent) and boasts five players who average double-digit points per contest.That scoring barrage is bad news for Cornell, which ranks 348th in defending 3-pointers, and is the 336th-best defense in KenPom’s rankings.Don’t let Cornell’s pseudo-home-court advantage scare you away from backing Yale in this tilt.The Play: Yale -3.5 (FanDuel)Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry.He loves using game theory to help pu...