#763/764 ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* Under 136.5 Points – Rutgers @ Michigan, Thursday at 9 PM ET - Michigan just came back from a 3 week Covid stoppage and looked a bit rusty on offense. They shot just 41% in a 67-59 win @ Wisconsin over the weekend. The offense may take awhile to come around after the long break but we know the constant here will be their defense. They rank #1 in defensive efficiency in the Big 10 and #8 nationally. After holding the Badgers to 59 points on Saturday, they have now held half of their Big 10 opponents (5) to less than 60 points. That’s not great news for a Rutgers offense that is middle of the pack in offensive efficiency (7th in the Big 10) and averages only 65 PPG on the road this season. Rutgers defense is much better than their offense. They rank 12th nationally in defensive efficiency so we have 2 top 12 defenses in this game. Both teams rank in the bottom half of the league in tempo so we don’t expect an up and down game here. Neither team relies heavily on the 3-point shot with both ranking outside the top 200 with 29% (Michigan) and 26% (Rutgers) of their points coming from deep. That tells us the 3-point attempts will be limited here which favors the UNDER. On top of that, neither team gets to the FT line very often as they rank 13th & 12th in the conference in percentage of points coming from the stripe. So it looks like a lot of 2-point attempts in this game. Rutgers has gone UNDER the total in 4 of their last 5 games and Michigan has stayed below the total in 5 of their last 6. These 2 teams have met 8 times since Rutgers joined the Big 10 and only 2 of those games have topped 132 points. We like the UNDER here.