"Bet the House" Segment with Team and Player Rankings

 Alabama -3.5 over Purdue

The “Bet the House” segment barely saved itself last weekend, squeaking by with the narrowest of victories when Arkansas covered the 3.5 point spread against Michigan State by just a half point. While I want to focus mainly on Alabama and Purdue here, we have to talk about Arkansas for a minute.

The Razorbacks are one of the most talented teams in the country, but their performance against Michigan State was borderline pathetic, due more to the coaching than anything the players did. There’s no doubt that John Calipari is one of the greatest recruiters of all time, but I’m just gonna come out and say it, he’s below average as a coach.

Year after year, Coach Calipari has a really hard time identifying who his best players are, and who should be on the floor. What he’s doing with Maleek Thomas coming off the bench is reminding me of how he handled Devin Booker, forcing his team to start the game without one of its best players and ensuring that they don’t have their best lineup on the floor. While this is only one of the disastrous lineup mistakes Calipari is making early this season, his problems go beyond personnel decisions.

He consistently struggles to make adjustments on the fly, and his team was clearly unprepared for the kind of physicality and rebounding effort Michigan State brought to the game. While Coach Tom Izzo’s teams are always among the best rebounding teams in the country, there’s really no excuse for how badly Arkansas got dominated on the glass. The Razorbacks have a long way to go to reach their enormous potential, and until Coach Calipari makes some major changes, they’ll continue to be more of a solid top-20 team than the championship contender we were hoping to see.

Let’s now move on from my disappointment in Arkansas and Coach Calipari to a much more impressive SEC team, the Alabama Crimson Tide. The Alabama guards were fantastic in a gritty road win over St. John’s, consistently pushing the pace and keeping the St. John’s defense on its heels. Their quickness and ability to score from anywhere makes them extremely difficult to defend, and this could be a major problem for a Purdue team that lacks elite speed and athleticism.

While Purdue is a smart, veteran squad and I understand why they’ve started the season ranked so highly, they’re still badly overrated even after dropping from #1 to #2 this week. In their last game they struggled to pull away from an Oakland team that isn’t very good, and although they were without one of their better players Trey Kaufman-Renn, their limitations were on full display. While Kaufman-Renn is expected to return tonight, he likely won’t be at his best, and even if he is I don’t think it will matter. Alabama is just too fast and too athletic, and after losing to Purdue the last 2 seasons, I think the Crimson Tide will be eager to turn the tables and put a beatdown on the Boilermakers.