#647/648 ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* Under 139.5 Points – Xavier vs St Bonaventure, Tuesday at 7 PM ET - Xavier likes to play up tempo but St Bonnies is a slow paced team (253rd in adjusted tempo & 268th in possessions per game). It’s always easier to slow a team down rather than speed a team up which is why we always like the slower paced team to gain control of the tempo. No way St Bonnies wants to play fast in this game. They have the thinnest bench in college basketball with all 5 of their starters averaging more than 30 minutes per game. They basically have a 6 man rotation if one of the starters gets in foul trouble. They will turn this into a half court game with limited possessions. Both defenses are solid allowing right around 0.97 PPP on the season. Offensively, neither team shoots well from 3 with both averaging right around 32%. Because of that, neither team takes many shots from beyond the arc as they rank 313th and 283rd in percentage of points scored from deep. Throw in the fact that neither team fouls very much and the majority of points in this game will be scored inside the arc. Xavier remains without their 2nd leading scorer Scruggs (12 PPG) who was injured in their NIT win over Florida. St Bonnies games have gone Under the total in 6 of their last 8. They have topped 140 points just ONCE in their last 9 games because they play solid defense and slow teams down tempo wise. While Xavier has had some higher scoring games vs the faster paced teams in the Big East, when they faced the low possession teams their games have been low scoring. Villanova, Providence, and Butler are the 3 slowest paced teams in the Big East and Xavier’s played 7 games vs those teams and topped 140 total points just once. We think both teams struggle to get to 70 here and Under is the play.