Free Pick | NCAA | Thursday | Nov. 5

Nelly’s is 8-4 in our last 12 college football picks – get a selection Thursday with an 80% mark in weekday picks this season!

We won last night in basketball as well!

#649 Georgia State +11.5 over Charlotte 6:00 PM CT

Georgia State lost its opening night game Monday hosting Bowling Green, making a late rally to make things close after falling behind by as many as 19 points. Despite being at home, the Panthers had a 26-12 deficit in free throw attempts and saw Bowling Green hit 56 percent inside the arc. Georgia State only won 10 games last season, and this is a coaching change season with Jon Cremins taking over after rising the ranks as an assistant, most recently at Vanderbilt. Wes Miller is in his first season at Charlotte, with Miller rising in stature at UNC Greensboro before five seasons at Cincinnati without an NCAA Tournament bid. Charlotte won on the road Monday at Indiana State with 48 percent 3-point shooting for a pace that will be tough to replicate. The 49ers had 16 turnovers but dominated the rebounding for a nice early season win. Charlotte won 17 games last season but parted ways with Australian coach Aaron Fearne and the approach will be quite different under Miller as Charlotte played a very deliberate pace last season.  The Georgia State roster has turned over significantly but that should allow the pressure defense from Cremins to thrive while this is a program buying into analytics and will be a high-volume 3-point shooting team. Miller brought a few players from Cincinnati with him but there isn’t much depth on Charlotte’s roster, and this is a team that won’t likely have consistent scoring after averaging just 73 points per game last season. Jizzle James was supposed to be the star for the 49ers, but he was dismissed from the team just before the season forcing a bit of a rotation scramble. This could be a team with turnover issues and with a lower-scoring pace expected this spread looks too high with a bit of an overreaction to the contrasting one-game samples for a pair of teams in major transitions.