Free Picks: Oklahoma Sooners vs Texas Longhorns

Texas hasn’t faced too many opponents in true road matchups this year, with Tuesday marking just their fifth game of the season — albeit third in their past four — that hasn’t been at home or a neutral site. They’ll be up against their most ferocious road foe to date in Oklahoma, a red-hot team that edged Texas by one point when these schools met in Austin three weeks ago.

On the football field, the fabled rivalry between Oklahoma and Texas is called the “Red River Showdown” (formerly “Red River Shootout”). There is no fancy name for the rivalry on the basketball court, but rest assured the bad blood remains.

And for Tuesday night’s matchup, there’s more than reputation at stake for these top-15 teams: both are in striking distance to finish as the second or third seed for the Big 12 conference’s upcoming tournament.

In examining this matchup, we won’t worry too much about Texas’s troubling record against the spread of late (2-8 in its past 10). No, what matters for this BetPicks prediction is the money line, where Oklahoma finds itself as a slight favorite on the latest NCAA basketball odds. Given how tight the last matchup was between the Sooners and Longhorns, we think it’s only right to prioritize winning above covering for this particular college basketball pick .

Let’s home in on their most recent meeting, shall we? It came only three weeks ago, when Oklahoma grabbed an 80-79 win on the road. It’s funny to see how close the final score was because the Sooners actually maintained a lead from the game’s nine-minute mark and onward.

Texas featured balanced scoring, with five players posting double-digit points, but no one outperformed Oklahoma senior guard Austin Reaves, who had 23 points, four assists and five rebounds. Neither team shot the 3-pointer well (25.9 percent for Oklahoma, 24 percent for Texas), and the Longhorns were actually plus-five on the rebound battle — but the Sooners wore their opponent down by getting to the free throw line 34 times. Texas is known to foul in bunches, which is helpful to an Oklahoma team that shoots 74.9 percent from the line (59^th in NCAA Division I).

Now, look at what the teams have done since that meeting: Oklahoma has won three of four, beating No. 11 Alabama and No. 14 West Virginia in the process; Texas has won two of four, but neither win came against a ranked opponent. Oklahoma is more polished, and if they can force Texas to commit several fouls again they can carve a path to victory.

• Oklahoma is 7-3 ATS in its past 10 games
• The UNDER has cashed in six of the Sooners’ past 10 games
• Texas is 2-8 ATS in its past 10 games
• The OVER has cashed in eight of the Longhorns’ past 10 games