Texas basketball vs. Baylor: Prediction and odds college basketball
The final trio of games to round out the regular season begins for interim head coach Rodney Terry and No. 8 Texas basketball on Feb. 25 on the road in Waco against the No. 9 Baylor Bears and head coach Scott Drew. Texas will be looking to stay atop the Big 12 standings alongside the No. 3 ranked Kansas Jayhawks with a win over Baylor this weekend.
And if the Jayhawks wind up getting upset by the West Virginia Mountaineers at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence on Feb. 25, the Longhorns will have a shot to take sole possession of first place in the Big 12 standings with a couple of games remaining.
Texas comes into this matchup against Baylor with a record of 22-6 (11-4 Big 12) following a very convincing 72-54 win at home at the Moody Center in Austin on Feb. 21 over head coach TJ Otzelberger and the No. 23 Iowa State Cyclones. Terry and the Longhorns have won two straight and five of their last seven games.
Meanwhile, Baylor comes into this weekend with a record of 20-8 (9-6 Big 12) following its 75-65 loss at the hands of the No. 14 Kansas State Wildcats on the road in Manhattan on Feb. 21. After winning four in a row and 10 of its last 11 games prior to the latest two-game stretch against the Kansas schools, Baylor has hit a rough patch. Baylor has lost its last two by a combined margin of 26 points.
Here’s a look at the betting odds and game prediction as Texas gets set to face Baylor on the road at the Ferrell Center in Waco on Feb. 25, with the tip-off time set for 1 p.m. CT. This game will be broadcast live on ESPN.
Texas basketball vs. Baylor: Betting odds for Feb. 25
Texas is a 4.5-point underdog against Baylor and the over/under is set at 148.5 (per FanDuel).
The moneyline favors Baylor (-182) over Texas (+150).
According to Kenpom, Texas has a 43 percent chance of beating Baylor. And Kenpom projects Texas to fall short of Baylor 79-77 in this game.
Texas vs. Baylor prediction
The first time that these two teams met this season resulted in a 76-71 win for Terry and the Longhorns over the Bears at the Moody Center on Jan. 30. That win over Baylor snapped a lengthy losing streak for the Longhorns in this series that was previously sitting at a half dozen games.
According to Sports Reference, Baylor currently holds a five-game winning streak over Texas in Waco, dating back to the 2016-17 season. Baylor is also a really tough out in Waco this season.
Drew and the Bears have only lost two games at the Ferrell Center this season, which came against two solid Big 12 teams in Kansas State and the TCU Horned Frogs. And those two losses came by a combined margin of just three points.
If Texas wants to come away with the win in this one, it must limit the standout guard/wing trio for the Bears which consists of freshman Keyonte George, senior Adam Flagler, and junior LJ Cryer.
Each of those three Baylor players averages more than 14.5 points per game in conference play and two assists. They also each have a player efficiency rating north of 20 in Big 12 play this year, which is a sign that each of them is having a very positive overall impact on Baylor’s success against conference foes.
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I do think that Texas will be able to keep this one close. In the end, though, Baylor has too much working in its favor. Texas can very reasonably cover the spread, and keeping it close until the very end will be a key to potentially pulling off the upset this weekend.