#306524 ASA PLAY ON McNeese State -5 over Santa Clara, Tuesday at 7 PM ET - McNeese finished with a fantastic 30-4 record a year ago (18-0 in the Southland Conference) and they return 3 of their top 4 scorers from that team and they’ve added 3 high level players from Ole Miss, St Louis and Louisiana. Their head coach, Will Wade, was the head man at LSU for 5 years where his record was 108-54. His team sits at 4-3 this season but they’ve played one of the tougher slates in CBB (35th SOS per KenPom). Their losses have come at the hands of Alabama, South Dakota State, and Liberty who have a combined record of 20-5. All 3 of those losses were by 8 points or less including taking the Crimson Tide to the wire on the road despite shooting only 29% from deep and attempting 13 fewer FT’s. The Cowboys have played only 2 home games this season, including a 7 point win over a very good North Texas team and McNeese has won 20 straight games at home dating back to the start of last season. Santa Clara is 3-5 on the year and they’ve been on the west coast for all but 1 games this season. Now they make the long trek to Louisiana before heading straight back to California after this game to host Fresno on Saturday. The Broncos have played only 1 true road game (lost by 26 @ Nevada) and they already have 2 home losses on the year. Santa Clara is not a great shooting team hitting only 43.8% of their shots and 31% from deep. In their only true road game they shot poorly and scored only 59 points. McNeese is shooting 48% on the season (vs very good competition) and they get to the FT line a lot (33rd nationally in percentage of points from the stripe). They should have a big edge at the FT line as Santa Clara ranks 300th in percentage of points from the stripe. This line is too low in our opinion and we’ll take McNeese at home.