Steve Roberts-Imagn Images. Pictured: Vanderbilt’s Tyler Tanner.
The Georgia Bulldogs take on the Vanderbilt Commodores in Nashville, Tennessee, on Wednesday, Feb. 25. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. ET on SEC Network.
Vanderbilt is favored by 9 points on the spread with a moneyline of -450. Georgia, meanwhile, enters as a +9 underdog and is +350 on the moneyline to pull off the upset. The over/under sits at 167 total points.
Here’s my Georgia vs. Vanderbilt prediction and college basketball picks for Wednesday, February 25.
My Pick: Under 167 or Better
My Georgia vs Vanderbilt best bet is on both teams to go under the total. For all of your college basketball bets, be sure to find the best lines by using our live NCAAB odds page.
Mike White has Georgia sitting on the safe side of the NCAA Tournament bubble, thanks to high-octane, uptempo basketball.
The Bulldogs are scoring 90.4 points per game, fourth-most in college hoops, while playing at a top-20 tempo.
This is a throwback for White, who used to play fast with his teams at Louisiana Tech. But when he was at Florida, White's teams were significantly slower, including his 2019 team pacing among the slowest in the country.
White's roster in Athens is built to run, and he has embraced it.
That roster is highlighted by four players scoring in double-figures on a nightly basis.
Jeremiah Wilkinson leads the way at 17 points per game. The 6-foot-1 guard was a 15-point-per-game scorer last season for a much slower and less successful team at Cal. He leads the Bulldogs in steals, as Georgia forces turnovers at the highest rate in SEC play.
Those turnovers become instant offense for Wilkinson or his running mates, Blue Cain and 5-foot-11 sharpshooter Marcus Millender.
The fourth Bulldog scoring consistently is Kanon Catchings, formerly of BYU and nephew of Hall of Famer Tamika Catchings. Catchings is a 6-foot-9 floor-stretcher who takes more than five 3s per game and makes nearly 36% of those attempts.
The defensive side of the ball is where Georgia struggles, especially on the glass. This is the worst defensive rebounding team in the SEC, allowing opponents to grab more than 40% of their own misses in conference play.
On the season, Georgia ranks 345th in cleaning the glass, giving opposing offenses far too many second chances.
After a 16-0 start, Vanderbilt has slithered back toward the pack in the SEC.
The Commodores are a surefire NCAA Tournament team, currently mired in a four-way tie for fifth place in the conference. The top four seeds get a double-bye in the conference tournament, making Vandy's final four regular-season games enormously important.
The 'Dores will be led into March by sophomore point guard Tyler Tanner. He has a throwback origin story, having not hopped through the transfer portal.
Tanner scored 5.7 points per game in 20.4 minutes last season and stayed in Nashville for a second season. He has blossomed into one of the best creators and scorers in college hoops, averaging 18.5 points and 5.2 assists per game. He also leads the SEC in steals, nabbing 2.4 per game.
That mark would be surpassed by Vandy teammate Duke Miles, who grabs 2.7 per game but missed too many games to qualify for the statistic.
The sixth-year man, formerly of Troy, High Point and Oklahoma, ranks third nationally in steal rate, powering his own 16.4 points per game.
Those guards are given extra space thanks to Tyler Nickel, an elite-level shooter. Bigs AK Okereke and Devin McGlockton do the dirty work in the paint, rounding a roster that makes a ton of sense on paper.
In practice, that has mostly translated to reality. Back-to-back losses to Mizzou and Tennessee shifted the 'Dores onto shakier ground, yet this is absolutely a team primed to make noise next month.
Both of these teams appear to be uptempo, suggesting a high-scoring game. Of late, that's been less true.
Georgia's 90 points-per-game average was largely built with early-season blowouts. The Bulldogs hung 100 points or more in six nonconference games but haven't done so in regulation in SEC play.
In Georgia's first 13 games, all outside the conference, the Bulldogs averaged 99 points and 79 total possessions per contest. In SEC play, Georgia's last 14 games, those numbers have dropped to 82 points and 71.5 possessions.
The same is true of Vanderbilt. The Commodores averaged 94.2 points per game in the non-con portion of the schedule on 74.7 possessions but just 80.1 points and 69.6 possessions per game in the SEC.
These drop-offs are notable given how speedy some of the teams in the SEC are, like Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and Texas A&M, all top-40 tempo teams in the country.
Both of these backcourts try to apply pressure to create some pace, yet both should also handle the pressure and make this game play more in the half-court than the total suggests.
My Pick: Under 167 or Better
Shane McNichol covers college basketball for Action Network. He also blogs about basketball at PalestraBack.com and has contributed to ESPN.com, Rush The Court, Rotoballer, and Larry Brown Sports. He spends most of his time angrily tweeting about the Sixers, Eagles, and Boston College.
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