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Montana (5-2, 4-2 D1) at UC-Irvine (8-2, 7-2 D1) – 10:00 PM EST (BigWest.tv)
Today’s UTR Game of the Day features a pair of teams favored to win their respective conferences – the Montana Grizzlies (Big Sky) and the UC-Irvine Anteaters (Big West). Irvine does have a nice pair of road wins at Texas A&M and Saint Mary’s so far this year, and have only looked bad in one game – a home loss where a surprising Utah State beat the Anteaters by 24 points. Irvine has at least 6 players that average over 8 points a game, but is balanced enough that nobody currently averages double figures in points per game. They make up for that by holding teams to 65 points a game.
Montana’s biggest win to date consists of a home win against Georgia State, and much like UC-Irvine, they’ve had one bad game where they did not look as good in a blowout loss at Creighton. Ahmaad Rorie leads the Grizzlies with 15.9 points per game; Michael Oguine also averages 15 points and 5.7 rebounds for Montana as well.