#712 ASA PLAY ON Villanova -3 over UCLA, Saturday at 7 PM ET - This young UCLA team is making their first true road trip of the season and they are walking into a hornet’s nest across the country in Philadelphia. Villanova has lost 3 straight games, the last two by 2 points and in OT, and the Cats will be out for blood in a must win game with 2 road tilts on deck. Nova is 6-4 but they’ve played a very tough schedule (49th SOS) already facing 6 teams currently ranked in the top 90. They have very solid wins already this season over North Carolina, Maryland, Memphis, and Texas Tech. The Bruins have faced only 2 teams in the top 100, lost both, and the remainder of their games have come vs teams 250th or lower (343rd SOS for UCLA). The Bruins are one of the youngest teams in the country with only 1 upperclassman in the rotation and 2 freshman starters. That makes this a very tough spot for their first true road game vs a Villanova team that has 6 seniors in their top 8 rotation players. The Wildcats are a very solid defensive team allowing 0.97 PPP. The weakest part of their defense is defending the arc which shouldn’t hurt them here as UCLA is a poor 3 point shooting team (31%) and they take very few triples (3rd least attempts per game in the country). On the other end Nova is a top 35 offense efficiency with a 1.14 PPP and they are the #1 FT shooting team in the nation hitting 82% which will help if they have to salt this one away late. We’re grabbing Villanova at the bottom of the market so to speak off 3 losses vs an overvalued UCLA team.