Free Pick | NCAA | Sunday | Jan. 14

Nelly’s Basketball is heating up with 3-1 runs in both NBA & NCAA picks the past two days even with a painful narrow miss in yesterday’s 7*. Check out our 2-for-1 offer for daytime basketball Sunday!

Nelly’s also has our first Wild Card pick set for Saturday – going 5-1 the past two Sundays in the NFL!

#831 Tulane -2.5 over Tulsa 2:00 PM CT

Tulsa was one of the nation’s worst teams going just 5-25 last season. A light non-conference path has enabled improvement in Erik Konkol’s second season, going 9-3 through the nation’s #343 ranked non-conference schedule. Now in AAC play the Golden Hurricane are 0-3 and while the losses have been reasonably competitive against decent competition, this is a difficult group to trust with a small underdog pointspread. Tulsa plays fast but is a high turnover team and a very poor 3-point shooting team despite a decent volume of long range shots. The 3-point defense has been good so far but has worsened so far in conference play and Tulane is an over 35 percent 3-point shooting team. The Wave have a top 50 turnover rate on both side of the ball and play at even faster pace than Tulsa, as Ron Hunter’s team will be happy to run in this matchup. Tulane is just 1-2 in league play but the losses came to North Texas and Florida Atlantic, likely two of the best teams in the conference, including losing by just a point Thursday to the Owls team that made the Final Four last season. Tulane checks in as a top three offensive efficiency team in AAC play while ranking ahead of Tulsa on defense as well. The Wave do have only one road win this season, but it was a decent result at Fordham and the Wave also beat Cal in a neutral site game. Tulane has been vulnerable against good rebounding teams with size, but Tulsa doesn’t fit that description and chances are the Golden Hurricane will remain one of the lesser teams in this conference as the non-conference start may be a mirage with seven of nine wins coming outside the nation’s top 240.