Why St. Johns and the points is the tournament bet to make on Friday - ESPN

The 2026 men's basketball tournament round of 16 is here and for my money, it's college basketball nirvana.

The trade-off for very few upsets early on is premium games for four straight days to decide who are the final four teams standing. This is the best, most competitive basketball you will see all year. Whether your brackets are busted or not, you're still going to be treated to some high-level hoops.

Throughout the tourney, I will provide my best bets for each round as well as my picks for the new ESPN Men's Tournament Challenge Eliminator game.

Here are my selections for the round of 16.

Note: Odds by DraftKings Sportsbook at time of Wednesday's publication and subject to change.

Game time: 7:10 p.m. ET (CBS)

The Red Storm have advanced to the second week of tourney play for the first time since 1999 and in just the third season under Rick Pitino. Surprisingly enough, they are here because of their defense, which is ranked in the top 10 in adjusted efficiency for the first time since their last round of 16 appearance. The Johnnies can match Duke defensively and their athleticism can contain Duke's Cameron Boozer. They held Kansas star Darryn Peterson to 5-of-15 shooting. I see a similar result here for Boozer.

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The total for this game is 142.5. Duke has seen just 10 totals this low all season. It has gone over this number just twice, and one of them was because it scored 100 points against Notre Dame. The correlation here is that if Duke is limited in scoring, that favors the Johnnies as a three-possession underdog. Rick Pitino is also 6-2 against the spread in the NCAA tournament