North Carolina is one of the most talented teams in the country, there’s no denying that fact. The Tar Heels come into this game at 23-4, including a 74-55 win over NC State in late-January. But since that game, North Carolina has faced an easy schedule and all of their road games have come against inferior opponents. In fact, North Carolina has been favored by an average of 11 points per game in their three road games since playing the Wolfpack. They failed to cover the pointspread in two of those games, and their only spread win came by just 4 points. Against their rival tonight, North Carolina is in a dangerous situation, especially considering their depth has been cut by two key injuries to their guards. NC State comes in off a pair of back-to-back losses to Duke and Florida State. The Wolfpack blew their game at Duke as they actually led by double digits late in the second half before collapsing to lose 78-73. That performance was impressive, especially considering they did it on the road; North Carolina lost at home to Duke two weeks ago. NC State’s home loss to Florida State can be attributed to being hung over after the Duke game so we’ll simply draw a line through that performance. The Wolfpack haven’t been successful against their rival recently, but tonight’s game presents their best chance to spring a big upset. This game figures to be close throughout, and since North Carolina hasn’t played a good team on the road, we see some tremendous value in taking the points with the Wolfpack on their home floor in this game tonight. 9* Play NORTH CAROLINA STATE (+).

Philadelphia comes into tonight’s game on a 3-game losing streak; the Sixers have also lost five of their last seven games. Their last loss in Minnesota was brutal as it came when they were called for a foul with just one second left on the clock. Philadelphia had yesterday off, and since they are catching Memphis on a back-to-back set after playing in Houston last night, we expect the Sixers to have a game plan geared towards running up and down the court. “Teams definitely know that we are a transition team,” Thaddeus Young said. “We prefer to run, get out in transition and try and get as many easy buckets as we can.” In their game at Minnesota, the Sixers took a whopping 90 shots from the field. And since the Grizzlies’ defense has allowed 97, 103, 102, 100 points in their last four games, we expect Philadelphia’s aggressive, fast-paced offense to score points tonight. Memphis’ offense has been in good form recently. Over their last five games, the Grizzlies are averaging 97 points per game on 45.8% shooting from the field and 40.2% shooting from three-point land. They’ve scored 207 points in their last two home games, and with the expected fast pace tonight, the Grizzlies should once again have a solid offensive output. In the last meeting between these two teams, they combined for 28 fast break points and 106 points inside the paint. That tells us that they both have trouble matching-up with the other’s personnel resulting in easy baskets in transition and close to the bucket. The posted total is extremely low considering the match-up, pace, and scheduling situation so we’ll call for a high-scoring game between the Sixers and Grizzlies tonight. 9* Play OVER the total.