Pennsylvania vs Columbia Prediction: Can Penn Cover the Big Number?
Pennsylvania vs Columbia Prediction: Can Penn Cover the Big Number?
Tonight we go somewhere we haven't gone all year and that's to New York City for a rare Ivy league game as we see if the Penn Quakers can beat the Columbia Lions. Most people aren't a fan of Ivy but in the old days on Friday nights you only had Ivy and maybe some MAAC but the Ivy is always Friday or Saturday because they care about studies, not athletics. Tonight we find out if some of these athletes can help us with our studies of money that is.
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Pennsylvania vs Columbia Prediction
Sometimes in sports, you see something and can't understand what or why it happened. The Penn Quakers are never going to be ranked, they are never going to be spoken about like the North Carolina's of the world, even though they do have a guy named Michael Jordan who played for them. Tonight though we try to find out if Penn can reverse what happened on January 8, 2022, and that is the Penn Quakers losing at home as a 14.5 point home favorite against the Columbia Lions.
Columbia has four wins this year and one win in the Ivy over these Quakers. Of those four wins, they have beaten Binghampton (9-10) in overtime, College of Mount St Vincent (yeah you know you never heard of them don't lie because they are not Division 1) a school with 1800 students, Maine (4-17) and the game they won in the Ivy over Penn.
The other three wins we can see but Columbia has one Ivy league win and Penn is in third place in the league. I know if I went to Penn I would be embarrassed and sure as hell don't want to lose twice to the worst team in the league. As we said earlier sometimes you can't explain stuff so let's see if we can see how it happened.
Columbia went into Penn as a double-digit dog and beat them at home. First, we see that Penn's best player Jordan Dingle who averages 19.4 points a game and is the only one on the team scoring double digits had his worst game of the season (3-13) and was tied for fourth on the team in scoring that night.
The extra 10 points he normally scores would have made them a winner and we expect that to happen tonight as Dingle has scored 31 in back-to-back games warming up for tonight. The real difference tonight is rebounding. We feel there is no way Columbia does what they did in their last meeting and that is two forwards Harding and Nweke (their best player) get 21 more rebounds than they usually average.
Penn will fix this for tonight's game because when you get outrebounded by 22 and have 16 less free throws that usually doesn't happen twice and this team barely won the game let's not forget that. We remind you they have four wins on the year and really three Division 1 and none against winning teams. Since the prior meeting, Columbia has lost every game (0-4) by a total of 52 (13 average) points and they haven't gotten close to the rebound number they had in the Penn game. Penn on the other hand beat Yale who is ahead of them, Harvard and Dartmouth but did lose to the best team in the league (Princeton).
We have a truly embarrassed bunch of Quakers who will probably be the only team Columbia beats this year in the Ivy coming to New York to get a little self respect back. This team is 8-1 in their last 9 as a favorite so usually, they win when they are supposed to (we know who that one loss is), while the Lions lose ats at home to losing teams usually as they are only 2-9 in this spot (Penn is a losing team as they are 8-12).
Dingle will get his tonight. The Lions will not get their 47 rebounds and 16 extra free throws tonight and the world will be back to normal as Penn wins by double digits (at least 13) at Columbia. We are laying the -9 with Penn tonight and so should you as we will be studying money after this athletic performance. Let's enjoy some Ivy league ball tonight.
Pennsylvania vs Columbia Pick
- Pennsylvania -9 -110 (Bet $110 to win $100)