The No. 2 Arizona Wildcats will take on the No. 15 Long Beach State Beach (yes, that’s accurate) in the first round of the 2024 NCAA Tournament on Thursday at 2 p.m. ET from Delta Center in Salt Lake City. LBS is now referring to itself as “The Beach” and is coming off a miracle run in the Big West Tournament. We’re going to go over the odds on DraftKings Sportsbook for the matchup and give our best bet.
2024 March Madness picks
No. 2 Arizona vs. No. 15 Long Beach State best bet
The Wildcats enter the tournament as a 2-seed or higher for the third straight season under third-year head coach Tommy Lloyd. Arizona finished at the top of the final Pac-12 regular season standings ever. They went 25-8 overall and 15-5 in conference play, losing to Oregon in the semifinal in the Pac-12 tournament. Despite some shaky play in the Pac-12, Arizona has one of the best non-conference schedules and resumes in college basketball. The Wildcats have wins over Duke, Michigan State, Wisconsin and Alabama, plus close losses to tournament teams Florida Atlantic and Purdue. They’ve played some of the strongest competition this season in non-conference.
There are a few blemishes for Arizona, mostly road losses in conference to Stanford, USC and Oregon State. But the Wildcats hit a lot of good metric on KenPom, ranking in the top-15 on offense and defense. Arizona is a great offensive rebounding team, led by 7-footer Oumar Ballo, who averages a double-double. UNC transfer Caleb Love leads the way for the ‘Cats averaging 18.1 points per game. The Wildcats play at one of the fastest paces in the country, ranking 16th in adjusted tempo and 8th in average length of possession.
The Beach enters the tournament under very unique circumstances. Long Beach State announced it was parting ways with head coach Dan Monson at the conclusion of the 2023-24 season. At the end of the regular season, Long Beach State finished 18-14 and 10-10 in Big West play. All Monson and The Beach did after that was go out and win the Big West Tournament, securing the automatic bid into March Madness. Monson’s big “F U” to the powers that be at Long Beach State will be talked about plenty this week.
Similar to Arizona, Long Beach State loves to play uptempo, ranking 29th in adjusted tempo and 13th in average length of possession. The Beach is not a very good shooting team but does have a ton of length between brothers Lassina Traore and Aboubacar Traore, who are both from the Ivory Coast, and AJ George, Marcus Tsohonis and Jadon Jones. You’ll see a lot of those five on Thursday against Arizona.
Betting lines
Thursday odds
Spread: Arizona -20
Total: 163.5
Moneyline: Arizona -2800, Long Beach State +1300
Opening odds
Spread: Arizona -20.5
Total: 163
Moneyline: Arizona -4000, Long Beach State +1600
All odds are courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook
Best bet: 1H O78.5 points (-120)
When game lines don’t look great to you for these 2-15, 1-16, 3-14 matchups in the tournament, always look to the halftime lines. We mentioned above, these are two very fast-paced teams. During non-conference play, Arizona hung 100+ points on multiple mid-majors like Morgan State, Belmont and UT Arlington. In fact, ‘Zona hung 100 points on Cal, Utah (3OT), Arizona State and Oregon this season. The Wildcats have a pretty incredible offense.
If we see that in the first half out the gate, I think we hit the over on the first-half line pretty easily. We also know that Long Beach State is also likely to push harder for buckets early in the game. If Arizona were to pull away later, we could see both teams sort of take the foot of the gas in the second half.
