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The UConn Huskies start their 2024/25 college basketball season at home to the Sacred Heart Pioneers on Wednesday. The venue is UConn’s Gampel Pavilion home court where there is set to be a party atmosphere. UConn is a 33-point betting favorite to win and we tell you if they will do it when we name our NCAAB betting picks.
- What: 2024/25 Men’s College Basketball
- Who: Connecticut Huskies vs. Sacred Heart Pioneers
- Where: Gampel Pavilion, Mansfield, Connecticut
- When: Wednesday, November 6th, 2024
- Tip-Off: 7 pm. ET
The UConn Huskies will unveil their sixth National Championship banner ahead of their season-opening fixture against the Sacred Heart Pioneers on Wednesday.
UConn won the 2024 championship by defeating the Purdue Boilermakers 75-60 in Arizona.
THE UCONN HUSKIES ARE THE 2024 NATIONAL CHAMPIONS 🏆#MarchMadness @UConnMBB pic.twitter.com/d2fPMfghrb
— NCAA March Madness (@MarchMadnessMBB) April 9, 2024
The win was their sixth in 25 years and their second successive after they also raised a banner 12 months earlier after they defeated the San Diego State Aztecs 76-59 in the 2023 National Championship match.
The Pioneers will hope the Huskies aren’t giving the match their full attention. Although coach Anthony Latina knows his team won’t be judged on this result.
Nevertheless, it is a sort of free hit for the Pioneers. And there will be plenty of interest in the match, so it is an opportunity for the Pioneers to put on a show.
But the flip side is that Sacred Heart also knows the Huskies have made better college teams than them look stupid over the past couple of seasons.
UConn vs. Sacred Heart Pioneers Match Betting
The UConn Huskies are the odds-on-betting favorite to win their season opener.
Such is the expected one-sided nature of the match, the bookmakers haven’t priced up the money line.
On the spread, Sacred Heart is receiving a massive 33-point start. To win with the spread, the Pioneers are -110. UConn is -110 to win and cover the spread.
The total line is set at 149. Over and under are both -110.
In the previous season, UConn averaged 81.4 points per game offensively and gave up 63.4 points per game. The Pioneers averaged 74.1 points in attack and allowed 72.3 points per game.
Those statistics suggest the bookmakers have got the total spread about right.
Check out our UConn vs. Sacred Heart NCAAB betting lines on our college basketball betting table. Our NCAAB odds are from the best college basketball betting sites.
| UConn vs. Sacred Heart |  |  |  |
| UConn | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Sacred Heart | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| UConn (-33) | -110 | -110 | -110 |
| Sacred Heart (+33) | -110 | -110 | -110 |
| Over 149 | -110 | -110 | -110 |
| Under 149 | -110 | -110 | -110 |
UConn
The No.3 UConn Huskies go into the new season as the +850 betting favorites to win the National Championship match again this season.
To make the Final Four, UConn is the joint-second favorite (alongside Kansas) at +200. The Duke Blue Devils are the favorites at +175.
Finally, in the futures betting to win the Big East regular season, UConn is the +125 betting favorite. Creighton is their closest rival at +350, and St John’s is +500.
Dan Hurley has been head coach at the Gampel Pavilion since March 2018. The new season will be Hurley’s seventh in charge of the Huskies.
The 51-year-old Naismith Coach of the Year (2024) winner has the chance to make history if he can lead the school to a third successive National Championship win in 2025.
UConn finished the 2023/24 season with an overall record of 37-3 (.925). In the conference, UConn’s record was 18-2 (.900). They also beat Xavier, St. John’s, and Marquette on their way to winning the Big East tournament, and they were No.1 seeds in the postseason tournament.
Sacred Heart Pioneers
The Sacred Heart Pioneers can’t come close to matching that record and have a completely different agenda ahead of them this season.
The school has just moved its athletic platform away from the Northeast Conference and into the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. The upshot of this is life is about to get more difficult for its men’s basketball team.
Settling into its new conference will be the priority for head coach Anthony Latina.
If anybody knows how to handle the needs of this school basketball team it’s Latina. He has been the head coach since 2013, and he was also an assistant to Dave Bike for eight years before taking over the main role.
The Pioneers have already started their 2024/25 season. They went down 81-70 on the road to the Temple Owls. Unfortunately for them, things are about to get even harder on Wednesday.
UConn vs. Sacred Heart Pioneers Betting Picks
A good stat to start our picks with is UConn has won its last 25 games at the Gampel Pavilion against non-AP-ranked opponents.
Furthermore, the Huskies have beaten the Pioneers on their previous three occasions, covering the spread in all the wins.
We all know that the big question is not if UConn will win, but will they win by 33 points or more. Well, if they do, 149 may well be covered, as the Huskies will likely rack up well over 90 points alone.
A spread of 33 points does look a lot. But Dan Hurley is going to have his UConn team pumped for the start of the season. The Huskies are going for the National Championship treble and will want to lay down an early marker.
Our pick is for the UConn Huskies to cover the spread.
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