Free Pick | NCAA | Saturday | Dec. 10

This is a great day to jump into the basketball season. Big E and Nelly’s have had terrific starts in early season action and big plays are available today! Big E has his December 15* Game of the Month Saturday while Nelly’s has a rare 7* selection tonight!

Free Pick Saturday: #613 Georgetown +8.5 over Syracuse 12:00 PM CT

Patrick Ewing’s Georgetown team won only six games last season as the 5-5 start this season has been encouraging. Wins of great substance are not there but they did get a win over LaSalle in Jamaica and losses to major conference squads Northwestern, Texas Tech, and South Carolina were competitive. Going on the road to face Syracuse is a difficult draw but Jim Boeheim’s squad is only 5-4 and has two losses outside the nation’s top 100. Syracuse nearly had another such loss with an overtime win over Richmond in Brooklyn. The strength of the profile for Syracuse comes based on a one-point win over Notre Dame as well as playing at Illinois to boost the strength of schedule, even if the Orange lost by 29 points in that game. Neither team shoots particularly well but Georgetown has a significant edge in interior scoring on offense and is a more than two percent stronger 3-point shooting team. Georgetown has the size to match up with the normal edge that Syracuse had in many matchups and the Hoyas are the much more experienced group. Syracuse has only three wins by this significant of a margin and all came outside the nation’s top 250. Georgetown should be able to stay in this game and has appeal at this price as this will be a big game for the team, as it was last season when the Hoyas beat Syracuse 79-75.