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The UTEP Miners and the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders will match up in college basketball action on Saturday.
UTEP limps in here at 6-10 on the season. The Miners are just 1-4 in their last five games, dropping to UTSA twice, North Texas and UAB with a win over Rice mixed into that span.
In the loss to the Blazers Thursday, UTEP’s top scorer was Evan Gilyard, with 25 points and a pair of rebounds. Nigel Hawkins provided 17 points for the Miners, and Efe Odigie doubled up on 10 points and 10 boards.
Over on the Middle Tennessee side, they’re currently 4-14 on the year. Following a lengthy skid of losses, the Blue Raiders finally got back in the win column Thursday versus UTSA.
In the win over the Roadrunners, Middle Tennessee was carried by big efforts from three players: Donovan Sims (24 points; six assists; five rebounds), Antonio Green (21 points; six rebounds) and James Hawthorne (20 points; seven rebounds).
The Miners are 5-2 ATS in their last seven Sunday games and 3-9 ATS in their last 12 road games. UTEP is 3-13 ATS in their last 16 versus CUSA and 0-5 ATS in their last five overall.
Meanwhile, the Raiders are 1-6 ATS in their last seven home games and 0-6 ATS in their last seven Saturday games. Middle Tennessee is 0-4 ATS in the last four following a straight-up win and 0-4 ATS in the last four following an ATS win.
There’s not a whole lot to get excited about when it comes to UTEP. They’ve got some decent scorers on their roster, but routinely fail to make it out of the 60-something-points range.
Middle Tennessee has flailed and flopped on the scoreboard many a night themselves, but looking at their scoring trends this year they seem to be able to put up more points on average than the Miners.....