College basketball’s Feast Week is upon us.
We’re in the middle of 12 consecutive days with college basketball games tipping off before noon and ending after midnight as teams compete in their early-season, multi-team events.
The biggest tournament of Thanksgiving week? The Maui Invitational.
The ever-entertaining three-day tournament will feature Connecticut, North Carolina, Iowa State, Michigan State, Colorado, Memphis, Dayton, and — my pick to win the event — Auburn.
Maui Invitational winner: Auburn (+330, DraftKings)
Dan Hurley and the reigning back-to-back champion Huskies are still garnering respect in the betting markets, but Bruce Pearl’s Auburn Tigers might be the nation’s best squad.
Johni Broome opting to return for his fifth year of college basketball was monstrous for War Eagle.
He’s among college basketball’s most impactful two-way interior players, and he’s starting to develop a decent perimeter jumper.
Auburn is loaded with shooting, playmaking, three-level offense and three-level defense between Broome and a loaded guard/wing corps that returns Denver Jones and Chad Baker-Mazara, while adding JP Pegues (Furman transfer) and Miles Kelly (Georgia Tech).
The Tigers can shoot it from deep, score on the low block, deny 3-point shots and protect the rim. They’re also a half-decent rebounding squad.
The results speak for themselves. Auburn is 4-0 straight up and 3-1 against the spread entering Friday.
The Tigers obliterated three solid mid-major teams in Vermont (94-43), Kent State (79-56) and North Alabama (102-69).
They lead the nation in two-point shooting (71 percent) and rank 12th in two-point shooting allowed (39 percent).
But the most impressive early-season win for any college basketball team is Auburn’s victory over Houston.
Behind Broome’s 20 points, the Tigers shot 20-for-28 (71 percent) from two-point range against Kelvin Sampson’s nearly impenetrable paint denial defense.
That result is vital to this handicap because Houston and Iowa State run nearly identical defensive schemes.
Both blitz ball screens and bring early help to deny the paint and rim while scrambling on the weak side.
If Auburn can score that efficiently on the Cougars, the Tigers can likely do the same to the Cyclones in the Maui Invitational’s first round.
After that, a second-round matchup with Dayton or North Carolina isn’t too daunting.
While both squads have solid backcourts, both rosters are physically small and don’t have the necessary frontcourt firepower to hang with Broome on either end.
A championship matchup with UConn seems inevitable.
We’ll see how the Huskies perform against Memphis and — if they win — Colorado/Michigan State, but I’m not yet sold on this version of the Huskies after three blowout wins over KenPom sub-300 squads.
In the backcourt, Hassan Diarra is no Tristen Newton at point guard, and he’s running into a turnover problem with higher usage (34 percent rate).
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And crucial Saint Mary’s transfer Aidan Mahaney is struggling early, scoring 23 points on 30 percent shooting through his first four games.
In the frontcourt, Tarris Reed and Samson Johnson bring decent defense and rebounding.
Still, neither can perfectly replicate Donovan Clingan’s two-way interior dominance as a post-up scorer and drop-coverage defender.
Ultimately, I believe Auburn is the best team in the event and should be considered the favorite.
I like how the Tigers match up with Iowa State in the first round, and I’d probably make them a one-possession favorite over UConn in a neutral-court championship game.
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Tanner McGrath has been a professional sports handicapper since 2018. Specializing in college sports and baseball, he’s a diehard fan of the Vermont Catamounts, the Miami Marlins and any home underdog. He found himself on the wrong side of the Miami Miracle in 2018, but made up for it four years later by hitting a 40/1 long shot on Sandy Alcantara to win the NL Cy Young.
